Forty-three years after the campus shooting at Kent State University in Ohio that left four students dead, shot by US soldiers during an anti-war demonstration, the controversy has not died, and the site has become a listed historic place. A look at how the Kent State shooting impacted the course of the Vietnam war.

"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio."

As support for a background-check deal collapses in the Senate, Harry Reid broke with the National Rifle Association and declared his support for an assault-weapons ban. “We must strike a better balance between the right to defend ourselves and the right of every child in America to grow up safe from gun violence,” the A-rated Nevada Democrat said on the Senate floor. Unfortunately for him, the outlook for gun-control legislation looks bleak. A bipartisan amendment on background checks that is a vital ingredient in a passable gun bill appears to lack the necessary votes. Sen. Joe Manchin, one of the bill’s cosponsors, said on the floor that he knows they’re close but doesn’t know what the outcome will be.

Reid added “I’ll vote for the ban because maintaining the law and order is more important than satisfying conspiracy theorists who believe in black helicopters and false flags,” he said. “I’ll vote for the ban because saving the lives of police officers, young and old, and innocent civilians, young and old, is more important than preventing imagined tyranny.”

The Senate will vote Wednesday afternoon on gun measures that may determine the shape of legislation inspired by the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.

A new investigative report from Seth Rosenfeld of the Center for Investigative Reporting has revealed that one of the most well-known radical activists of the 1960s, Richard Masato Aoki, an early member of the Black Panthers, was an FBI informant.

Via:

The man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training - which preceded fatal shootouts with Oakland police in the turbulent 1960s - was an undercover FBI informer, according to a former bureau agent and an FBI report.

One of the Bay Area's most prominent radical activists of the era, Richard Masato Aoki was known as a fierce militant who touted his street-fighting abilities. He was a member of several radical groups before joining and arming the Panthers, whose members received international notoriety for brandishing weapons during patrols of the Oakland police and a protest at the state Capitol.

Aoki went on to work for 25 years as a teacher, counselor and administrator at the Peralta Community College District, and after his suicide in 2009, he was revered as a fearless radical.

But unbeknownst to his fellow activists, Aoki had served as an FBI intelligence informant, covertly filing reports on a wide range of Bay Area political groups, according to the bureau agent who recruited him.

Reportedly recruited as he was graduating from Berkeley High School, A Nov. 16, 1967, intelligence report on the Black Panthers lists Aoki as an "informant" with the code number "T-2."

"He was my informant. I developed him," FBI agent Burney Threadgill Jr. said in an interview. "He was one of the best sources we had."

Stop Gun Violence from Occupy Riverwest on Vimeo.

The recent mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and Oak Creek, Wisconsin receive a lot of media attention but 86 Americans die to gun violence in our country everyday. To shed more attention on this glaring and difficult statistic, the Overpass Light Brigade decided to bring "STOP GUN VIOLENCE" to a Wisconsin bridge over I-94 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This episode of the show reports on Anaheim shootings, NYC ConEd occupy Storefront Picket Support, TIAA-CREF Divest Rally & Occupy Town Square and Casseroles march.

OWS Week also covers events in Jackson Heights as well as LA Solidarity Park and Chalk Walk vigil and Festival Cultural.

Also on this edition of the show we report on MacArthur Park march in solidarity with Mexico YoSoy132. Then there's Portland: EPIC Rally for Housing Justice.

[Via]

Two teenage lesbians were shot in the head in a Portland, Texas park on Saturday, with one of them dying from the bullet wound and the other in critical condition. Police are still investigating the shootings of 19-year-old Mollie Olgin, who died, and 18-year-old Mary Chapa, and have claimed all evidence indicates that there were “third parties” involved in the crime. Friends say the girls had been a couple for five months, but police have yet to determine whether or not their sexuality played a role in the assault.

The girls were found by two persons visiting the park. There have been no arrests made in the case.

[Via]