Veteran For Peace member, Scott Olsen, a Marine Corps veteran twice deployed to Iraq, is in hospital now in stable but serious condition with a fractured skull, struck by a police projectile fired into a crowd in downtown Oakland, California in the early morning hours of today. Other people were injured in the assault and many were arrested after Oakland police in riot gear were ordered to evict people encamped in the ongoing "Occupy Oakland" movement. Olsen is also a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

VFP members are involved with dozens of these local "occupy movement" encampments and we support them fully. In Boston, for example, our members, wearing VFP shirts and carrying VFP flags, stood between a line of police and the encampment, urging police to "join the 99%" and not evict the protesters. In that case, several of our members were banged and bruised when the police decided instead to carry out their eviction orders.

In the aftermath of this past week’s tragic killing of 49 exotic animals, including 18 rare Bengal Tigers, in Zanesville, Ohio, Republican Governor Kasich and conservatives are scrambling, trying every way possible to put a right-wing spin on this calamity. Endangered wolves & monkeys were among the animals killed after their troubled owner, Terry Thompson, took his own life and released the animals. Six leopards were saved and a monkey is still unaccounted for. Reality, however, will just not spin that way.

Although professionals in handling exotic animals have been pushing for years for stronger regulations regarding ownership of these animals, an alliance of conservatives, libertarians, Republicans & NRA types have successfully blocked them. Ohio remains one of only seven states that require no permits & have next to no regulations for the private ownership of exotic animals. Previous Governor Strickland had issued an executive order banning the purchase or boarding of exotic animals by anyone who’d been convicted of animal cruelty. Even this relatively mild measure was immediately canceled by new right-wing Gov. Kasich.

Tunisian trade unionist and activist Jamel Betaeb, winner of the 2011 Democracy Award from the National Endowment for Democracy, spoke with the Columbus Free Press Sunday evening at Freedom Plaza, as a few Arab Spring revolutionaries visited about 70 American Autumn revolutionaries and activists gathered on Freedom Plaza, one of two Occupy DC sites.

Wary of being co opted by big unions and the Democratic Party, the Occupy Movement is nonetheless a progressive form of populism. Betaeb and others like him inspire us. They are our counterparts in a global movement for fairness and justice. Our concern about good jobs for our communities is not based on xenophobic anger and fear.

The global upheaval that is the Occupy Movement is hopefully in the process of changing---and saving---the world.

Through the astonishing power of creative non-violence, it has the magic and moxie to defeat the failing forces of corporate greed.

A long-term agenda seems to be emerging: social justice, racial and gender equality, ecological survival, true democracy, an end to war, and so much more. "When the power of love overcomes the love of power," said Jimi Hendrix, "the world will know peace."

Such a moment must come now in the nick of time, as the corporate ways of greed and violence pitch us to the precipice of self-extinction.

At that edge sits a sinister technology, a poisoned cancerous power that continues to harm us all even as 3 of its cores melt and spew at Fukushima.

Atomic energy, the so-called "Peaceful Atom", has failed on all fronts.

Once sold as "too cheap to meter," it's now the world's most expensive electric generator.

Once embraced as a corporate bonanza, it cannot obtain private liability insurance.

Wednesday evening, anti-abortion activist and Christian Domionist Mark Harrington and his latest knock off organization, Created Equal, protested a private fashion show fundraiser for Planned Parenthood of Central Ohio held at the Shadowbox Theatre on S. Front Street. .While any excuse to picket Planned Parenthood is a good excuse for Harrington, this event billed as "Condom Couture"--condom-inspired fashion with a cause" has driven the usually stay-at-home Harrington into the street. (As this piece was going to press I learned that some kind of altercation occured with Created Equal, Planned Parenthood security, and Columbus police. I am trying to suss this out and will report on it later if I learn anything.)

Maybe it's because this isn't' just some rubber chicken banquet. It's $ponsored by the marketing research firm One Point Contact, Continental Real Estate Companies, the Crane Group, and Teva Women's Health. I have no idea who showed up this year, but last year’s local luminaries included Mary and Bob Lazarus, Howard Sirak, and Channel 10's Andrea Cambern. Not a rubber chicken in sight.