On the Gaza disengagement

There has been a media circus fed by a huge Israeli government PR effort to drum up sympathy for the "painful" relocation of settlers from Gaza (less than 2% of total settler population). But who are these settlers and why were they brought there in the first place? Is Israel really leaving Gaza or merely switching to occupying it from outside rather than from inside? Will Gaza become a large open air prison with its population held hostage as Israel control its airspace, natural resources, and access? Few journalists dare to ask.

Keeping his eyes on the prize

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, announced today that he plans to hold a rally outside the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington in late September to keep the spotlight on the issue of reauthorizing the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Rev. Jackson also disclosed that he will renew his call for civil rights and labor leaders to meet with U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and he plans to hold hearings throughout the South to secure testimonies on voter restrictions and voter suppression. All of these efforts, he said, are aimed at encouraging the Department of Justice to enforce the Voting Rights Act and the Bush Administration to reauthorize the Act with protections against discrimination when it comes to race and language. The act, signed 40 years ago on August 6, 1965, expires in 2007.

Flip's fundamentalist jihad

Operation Save America director Flip Benham returned to Central Ohio on August 12 ? without the dog, pony, and ass ? to present what he called a series of "training sessions" during a week-long revival at Minutemen United headquarters church, New Beginnings, in Warsaw. The following day, he joined Minutemen founder Dave Daubenmire, New Beginnings pastor Bill Dunfee, and Ohio Constitution Party Vice Chair Dr. Patrick Johnston, his wife Elizabeth, and all the little Johnstons, along with assorted Minutemen and friends for their weekly fetus-saving crusade at Capital Care Women's Center in Clintonville. CapCare was the scene of several OSA protests a year ago during its "national event" here, which included the 6-day occupation of Columbus City Hall plaza.

Protests at the Dispatch over Bill Moss cartoon

Monday, August 22, at noon, protesters stood outside of the Dispatch offices chanting "Dispatch, Disgrace" in anger to what they perceived as a disrespect to the memory of local social crusader Bill Moss. Two days after he unexpectedly passed away, the Dispatch ran a cartoon caricature of him beating a shoe demanding to get into heaven. There has been an uproar in Columbus over what was perceived to be a very disrespectful and unfair portrayal in death of a former school board member and community leader.

Barry Edney of the Ordinary People's Movement, said "This was payback for Bill Moss's telling the truth. The Dispatch spent thousands trying to get him off of the school board and the decision to run the cartoon involved Mike Curtin, an editor and the cartoonist." When Edney was asked what he thought about the comment by Mike Curtin on the radio that Bill Moss would have laughed at the cartoon, he said "Yeah but it would be more of a chuckle at their ignorance."

Free Press story lands number 3 spot on Project Censored's list

Every fall, Project Censored presents the 25 most censored stories of the past year. The Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism (CICJ) is proud to announce that freepress.org Editor Bob Fitrakis and Senior Editor Harvey Wasserman's article "How a Republican election supervisor manipulated the 2004 Central Ohio vote, in black and white," posted November 23, 2004, was rated number three on the list of the 25 most censored stories of 2004-2005.

The censored story focuses on the role of Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder, the former head of the county's Republican Party, and how he failed to put out 76 voting machines on Election Day, all of them in the Democratic city of Columbus and 42 of them in the heavily pro-Kerry majority African American wards on the city's east side. Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips estimates that this may have cost Kerry up to 17,000 votes. Damschroder was recently suspended for a month without pay for accepting a check in his office from a Diebold lobbyist made out to the Republican Party on the day bidding opened for voting machines in Franklin County.

Proposal for a new plant at Piketon

US Enrichment Corporation (USEC) currently has an application with the NRC to build a new uranium enrichment facility at the Piketon PORTS site. Enriched uranium has a lower content of fissionable U235 than the highly enriched uranium formerly produced. Citizens have been told that this enriched uranium will be used for power plants only. This American Centrifuge Plant (ACP) would rely on a gas centrifuge process, which would not use as much electricity as gaseous diffusion. The old gaseous diffusion plant, currently on cold standby, was reported by citizen research to use as much electricity as the City of Los Angeles when it was in operation.

PORTS history and existing clean-up effort

In July 2004, DOE issued approval for construction of a facility at the PORTS site that will convert highly reactive depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6, left over from the former gaseous diffusion process) to the more stable uranium oxide. Although this conversion would appear to be desirable, there are downsides to the operation. One is that the technology is unproven. Another is that large numbers of cylinders of DUF6 are being trucked to PORTS from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for processing in a facility which is already 14 months behind schedule in its construction. DOE has estimated that the conversion facility, when operational, will take at least 25 years, working around the clock, to convert this DUF6 to uranium oxide. There are also large quantities of DUF6 at Paducah, Kentucky. Ohioans want to make every effort to ensure that our state does not become a defacto waste dump.

Radon emissions suggest possible illegal weapons research

Pashenko found a spike of radon gas when he tested a PORTS sample over time. Buske reported that radium, not uranium, would be the source of radon of that quantity. Radium can be used as a powerful source of neutrons. Buske, an expert on nuclear weapons facilities and the politics surrounding the production of nuclear weapons, concluded that a probable explanation for radium in the sample is that the US is engaging in micronuclear neutron weapons research. If this is proven to be true, it would be a violation of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty to which the U.S. is signatory.

Offsite radiation at Piketon site confirmed

On July 15, 2005, the citizen organization PRESS (Ports mouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security) held a press conference in the Southern Ohio town of Portsmouth to announce confirmation of excessive background radioactivity first measured in November 2003 by Russian nuclear physicist and environmentalist Sergey Pashenko. The testing done by Pashenko in 2003 in the area around the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS) yielded background radiation levels at least 100 times greater than normal background levels. PORTS is located north of Portsmouth and just south of Piketon, Ohio.

Linking anti-war and global justice protests

More than two years after the illegal and immoral U.S. invasion of Iraq, the nightmare continues.

More than 1600 U.S. soldiers have died, at least another 15,000 have been wounded; even the most conservative estimates of Iraqi deaths number in the tens of thousands. Iraq, a once sovereign nation, now lies in ruins under the military and corporate occupation of the United States; U.S. promises to rebuild have not been kept and Iraqis still lack food, water, electricity, and other basic needs.

A majority of Americans believe that this war never should have happened, but our elected representatives in Washington continue to rubber-stamp the Bush Administration's disastrous Iraq policies. They have given military recruiters nearly unrestricted access to our schools ? and the Pentagon nearly unrestricted access to our tax dollars. At a time when our vital social programs are eroding or completely decimated, an overwhelming majority in Congress recently approved Bush's request for an additional $82 billion in war funding, and there's already talk of another $50 billion appropriation this fall.

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