Opinion

The Columbus Free Press celebrated our 55th anniversary last Saturday, November 8 and honored five community activists, plus one outstanding community organization.

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The event was the November Salon and Annual Awards ceremony at the First Unitarian Universalist Church. Dan Dougan served as master of ceremonies.

Any time a public official makes an on-the-record pronouncement to the press, it represents an official statement. If a military man makes a false official statement, it represents a court martial offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The Fourth Commandant of The Marine Corps – Colonel Anthony Gale – was convicted by a court martial and cashiered for making just such a statement. The current commandant – General Eric Smith – should suffer similar censure for committing the same offense.

On January 15 of this year, General Smith looked members of the Pentagon press corps in the eye and told them that the Marine Corps had never signed on to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. This was a blatant falsehood. As he was speaking, his staff was frantically disestablishing the Corps' extensive DEI infrastructure and purging its websites of DEI related material. Including its personnel guidance contained in Talent Management 2030 which included the words "reinforcing diversity, promoting equity, and encouraging a culture of inclusion."

Editor's note: The election results from November 4th's Columbus City Council District 7 race between Tiara Ross and Jesse Vogel showed that Vogel won the most votes in District 7, but lost the election to Ross, who won the most votes outside the district. Under Columbus' odd district-based system, district candidates are voted on by the entire city.

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COLUMBUS CITY COUNCIL PRESS RELEASE - 11/6/25

Congratulations to Tiara Ross who will be the next Columbus CounciI member from District 7!

TRANSLATION

Without the transfer of tens of thousands of dollars from members of City Council she would have lost. We tipped the scales of local democracy to get what we wanted. She owes her loyalty to City Hall and myself; not you. She will obey everything we tell her.

I look forward to working with her to move Columbus forward. Every neighborhood and every family will benefit from her passion and heart for service. Her victory is not just for her but for every community that needs a fighter.

TRANSLATION

BANGKOK, Thailand -- A coding flaw in China's artificial intelligence application DeepSeek allows it to reveal subversive details about Beijing's extensive censorship, "hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras," human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, and other contradictions to the Chinese Communist Party.

DeepSeek's AI R-1 artificial intelligence app also warned any Chinese trying to "Make China Great Again" would be charged with sedition.

"DeepSeek is well-suited for use cases such as unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous surface vessels, and forward fire-control nodes where limited power and communications bandwidth have historically restricted AI use," the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation reported on Oct. 27, analyzing "DeepSeek's use in China's military and public security systems."

China's "public security literature also frames DeepSeek as a tool for intelligence-led governance."

Chinese "official discourse further elevates DeepSeek as critical to a 'new-type public security combat power'," Jamestown said.

Hours before New York City voters elected Zohran Mamdani as their next mayor, right-wing pundit and MAGA podcast superstar Megyn Kelly stated Muslims like New York City's mayor-elect shouldn't hold office in the U.S. Kelly said Mamdani, a U.S. citizen born in Uganda, is "not American" and that Muslims should not be allowed to hold a public office in America because she said that “the tenets of Islam are not consistent with Western civilization.” I will get to that in a minute.

First, one has to wonder if Megyn Kelly had ever met a Muslim in her home state or if her parents are closely related. Either way, this hatemonger thinks that she will not be held accountable for her bigoted and insulting comments about Muslims. Miss Kelly sounded like Archie Bunder with a law degree. She is the one who is un-American and just plain sick. 

American citizens regardless of origin are entitled to run for elected offices as long as they qualify by law. It is up to voters to decide whether they should serve or not. Kelly is basically saying she doesn't like his politics therefore he shouldn't be eligible. 

Dr. Bob and Dan-o Dougan bring us songs about doctors, nurses and medicine, including Dear Doctor, many songs with the name "Doctor, Doctor," Doctor My Eyes, and more!

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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a federation of seven emirates that tightly controls speech and where political parties are illegal. The tiny Gulf state is home to 10 million people of whom just 10 percent are Emirati citizens. The UAE has recently made international new when it deported a Palestinian telecom engineer, identified as S.M., after living in the UAE for 20 years, following a casual comment during a celebration at a government agency in Abu Dhabi in which he refused to drink Pepsi, saying: "Boycott."

According to informed sources quoted by Sunna Files, the Palestinian engineer was summoned to a security agency in Abu Dhabi just two days after the incident and informed that he had to leave the country within days. This forced him to liquidate his business and withdraw his children from their schools before leaving for Jordan with a temporary passport.

UAE's repressive measures against free speech supersede those of Israel and US

Kratom. 

As the Mayo Clinic describes it: “Kratom is a supplement that is sold as an energy booster, mood lifter, pain reliever and remedy for the symptoms of quitting opioids, called withdrawal. But the truth about kratom is not so simple. And there are safety problems linked to its use.”

The article continues: “Kratom is an herbal extract that comes from the trees of an evergreen tree called Mitragyna speciosa. The tree grows in Southeast Asia.” However, “some kratom sellers add more of the active ingredient than kratom naturally has….Depending on the amount of active ingredient in the product…taking kratom can be harmful…The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned people not to use kratom because of possible harm it can cause.”

A key aspect of the kratom issue is something called 7-OH. It makes up a tiny portion of the kratom leaf—less than 1 percent—but can be, and is being, synthesized to a strength of many, many times its potency in the plant. 

A couple of recent stories relating to the utter bestiality of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians have exposed the criminality of successive US governments in supporting the Jewish state no matter what it does. Observers of the lopsided relationship understand very clearly that Israel’s lobby in the United States, backed up by Jewish billionaires who are willing to spend whatever it takes to corrupt the political system and buy up the media, has succeeded in making Washington a totally controlled client state manipulated by extreme war criminals like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is rewarded by the near complete loyalty of Congress and the White House. The one sided relationship dominates both Republicans and Democrats and has been most evident in the Presidencies of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who have chosen to ignore the reality of the Israeli slaughter of some hundreds of thousands of Palestinians using US weapons and Washington’s political protection in international fora. For what it is worth, neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump has spoken out effectively on the murder and torture of the Palestinians by Israel.

Somewhere between New York’s Studio 54 disco and the White House, Donald Trump became infused by militant Christianity. At the same time, he also seems to have been imbued by the most extreme, far-right Zionism.

Politics do odd things. Trump may espouse a lot of oddball causes, but he’s no fool. He lives and breathes politics.

This week’s political rabbit out of the hat is, of all places, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nations, with 232 million rambunctious people. As with many of today’s world problems, Nigeria was a creation of British imperialism. The British took a very large swathe of West Africa comprising all sorts of peoples, religions and tribes, drew a line around its borders, and called it Nigeria.

Northern Nigeria, which abuts the Sahara, was predominantly Muslim. Southern Nigeria, where vast stores of oil were eventually discovered, became largely Christian thanks to intense British missionary activity. The two huge communities occasionally squabble or fight, most often over land disputes, cattle rusting and kidnapping of women.