Four Dead in Ohio

Vigil Held In Honor Of KSU May 4 Shootings

A silent 12-hour candlelight vigil to remember the Kent State tragedy is being held this morning, NewsChannel5 reported.

Thirty-four years ago, four students were shot and killed by the National Guard at the KSU campus. They were protesting the Vietnam war.

The memorial started Monday night to honor the four students killed and nine others injured May 4, 1970.

The May 4th Task Force, students who are putting the memorial together, said this year’s theme is the Patriot Act.

The kick off to this year’s remembrance began last night. At 11 p.m., students marched with candles to the site where the students were shot.

At noon, students will detail what led up to the shooting along with ringing the victory bell at 12:24 p.m. 15 times in honor of those who lost their lives in Kent State and Jackson State that year.

WEWS reported many students believe this year’s memorial is extra special because of the war on terror and the loss of troops in Iraq. - newsnet5.com

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

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

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

- Neil Young
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

Editor’s note: There is credible evidence that there was a pre-existing government plan for the National Guard to open fire on the students as a desperate step to put an end to the student movement against the war in Viet Nam. But many believe the public hearings held, were a whitewash and coverup. No person was ever convicted of committing these state-executions at Kent State on May 4, 1970. The U.S. government may be gearing up to reinstate the draft again due to its pending defeat in Iraq and its failure to recruit sufficient numbers of young people into its “volunteer army”. Will we see repeats of the Kent State killings by the government as the “war on terrorism” mirrors the war in Viet Nam? We are already seeing them in the “volunteer army”, aren’t we? There is one lesson we can learn from the Kent State killings and every war the U.S. government has conducted: Noone should have any lingering question about what the U.S. government is capable of doing to its own people. - Les Blough, Editor
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Comment: Vietnam, Kent State, September 11, 2001, Iraq. Killing Americans comes easy to those in power. Although these deaths are always either blamed on someone else or justified because everyone needs to make sacrifices to stay free, the truth is that we are all nothing but cannon fodder for the rulers and an energy source for their controllers. We are the means to their ends.

We can only continue to be fooled as long as we buy into their ends, the values that our materialist society considers so highly while clutching their Bibles and singing the praises of the Lord. As long as we believe the lie that anyone in America can succeed as long as she or he works hard, that there is an equal opportunity for the daughter of a poor Black family in Mississippi as there is for the son of a Bush, or that even if we do not become a celebrity, we are better than everyone else because, at least, we are American, the bullets will remain in the rifles and those rifles will remain pointed at us.

There is no democracy in the United States. There is no real participation of the citizen in the political process. By and large, most people don’t care. They elect a congressman or a president to take care of business for a few years and then either re-elect him or change horses. Decisions are taken behind closed doors, and when Bush makes a public appearance to discuss his policies, he presents his case in front of hand-picked zombies who take his smirk for a show of concern and his psychopathic inability to express empathy as proof that he is “one of us”. Bush is president because of two rigged elections not because he was elected.

Those who attempt to stand up to this wall of contempt for individual rights and the principles upon which their country was founded are hustled out of the audience, thrown into pens for “free speech”, and ridiculed with spiteful glee by right-wing pundits on the airwaves. They are denounced as un-American and suggestions are made that they either be thrown into jail or be killed. Freedom of speech means the freedom to agree with the war president, the former AWOL National Guardsman, now commander-in-chief, with a thing for uniforms and maybe even the men in them or out of them.

Can enough Americans wake up to the truth of what is happening in their country to change the course? We doubt it. Even if they wake up, the fanatics are still in power and a few more dead protestors aren’t going to make them lose any sleep. The alphabet soup agencies are likely scouring the Internet for voices of dissent and compiling the lists of those to be hauled in during the first sweep, and the second, and the third…. The Democrats are as corrupt as the Republicans. What choice do Americans have on the political landscape?

A future crisis provoked by an economic crash or some un-dreamed of natural disaster (by those who aren’t following very closely the news about meteor sightings, or volcano and earthquake threat) could shift the political and natural landscape in the blink of an eye. However, the powers that be are very likely fully aware of the possibility of such dangers and are probably making their plans as you read these lines.

The next time around, four dead in Ohio may seem like nothing.