Human Rights
Background: Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation is a petroleum, natural gas, and natural gas liquids exploration and production company based in Houston, Texas. Cabot is interested in drilling exploratory horizontal hydraulic wells in Holmes, Richland and Ashland counties. Cabot has entered into a sublease agreement with Columbia Gas Transmission L.L.C. to explore below the gas storage fields located in these areas. Cabot has contracted with Western Land Services to go door to door to convince landowners to lease their land to Cabot Oil & Gas to give them the ability to drill extraction wells. Landowner groups like C.O.L.A. form to deal with the offers made by companies such as Western Land Services under the premise of obtaining the ‘best deal’.
As I write this article, the total number of homicides in Columbus has reached a record breaking number of 140, breaking the previously held record of 139 in 1991. The latest victims range in age from 37 to 57 years old. Columbus is the 14thlargest city in America with at least 860,000 residents living in this rapidly growing city.
According to the HUD’s 2017 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, Columbus has about 1,691 homeless residents, which includes veterans, families, youth, sheltered and unsheltered and chronic homeless people. The total number for Ohio is 10,095 homeless residents. The good news for Columbus is that 2017 saw a decrease by three percent from 2016.
According to the Ohio Department of Education 2016-2017 Report Card Resources, Columbus, Ohio received D’s and F’s in all categories in education. The city schools earned an F in the Graduation Component Grade, a D in the K-3 Literacy Component Grade and an F in the Prepared for Success Grade.
November 15 ended up being the third time since 1946 that an execution in the US was left unfinished. A “failed” execution. Not “botched,” because while it was ugly, the prisoner left on his own power.
Alva Campbell was to be killed in revenge for murdering Charles Dials in 1997. Campbell is a very sick man. He could die on his own within months. It was well known before entering the death house that “no suitable veins” had been found in preparations for the execution.
Thousands of Ohioanshad urged Governor Kasich to avoid a spectacle by simply pushing Campbell’s date back enough that he would die in prison like most killers convicted of capital murder. “Life without parole” really means “death in prison.”
Just prior to Hitler-inspired neo-Nazis and their white supremacist allies descending on Charlottesville, Virginia in August, the FBI began characterizing the Black Lives Matter movement as “Black-identity extremists.” As best the Freep can tell, the FBI made up this term to apply to anyone who advocates equal rights, racial justice and an end to police brutality against minorities.
The Black Alliance for Peace put it this way: “The state is growing more desperate and dangerous. It faces a crisis, one where its own legitimacy is being questioned. In a re-play of the repression faced by Black liberation forces in the 1960s and ‘70s, news broke that the Black resistance movement is in the cross hairs of the state. So-called ‘Black-identity extremists’ are now the new FBI targets, a category that can include anyone who believes Black people have the right to resist and deserve self-determination.”
Frank Martin stood in front of his Standing Rock middle school students on the morning of April 1, 2016 with an announcement that none of them expected. The predominantly Native American students were surprised to hear that 50 tribal leaders were undertaking a ceremonial 20-mile ride on horseback that very morning to draw attention to the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The tribal leaders had not been consulted about the pipeline that was planned to go under the Missouri River just north of the tribal lands. The biggest concern was the risk of a leak polluting the river. The ride and subsequent camp would lead to a standoff between tribal leaders and their supporters against an alliance of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), their hired militia, the state of North Dakota, and military and police personnel from across the country. It was a confrontation that would have global repercussions and would be witnessed by tens of millions on social and mainstream media.
In case you missed it on Dr. Oz, the cure for Alzheimer’s (and quite possibly other types of cognitive decline) has arrived, only it’s not so much a pill or even an immunotherapy as it is a wholesale lifestyle change. Think clean eating, loads of healthful oils, 12-hour fasting, physical activity and probably something along the lines of Emotional Freedom techniques--particularly if you’ve grown up in a culture that discourages emotional expression and personal authenticity. Goodbye, Aricept, chain restaurants and packaged foods; hello, bone broth, home cooking and evening strolls. Dr. Dale Bredesen, the lead author in this research at the Buck Institute (Novato, CA) boasts a growing cadre of nearly 1,000 middle aged and elderly adults who have turned the table on Alzheimer’s by faithfully adopting his ReCODE protocol. They meet regularly to share their progress and you can too (or merely join as a voyeur) at apoe4.info/forums, named after the gene associated with an increased risk for the disease. His MPI Cognition site is also kind of cool, at drbredesen.com.
A conference in Quebec gave me an excuse to escape to our northern border and French Canada for a little summer break. (Part 2 of “Pain” is in the hopper, and we’ll have it for you in October or November issue.) It was the fifth year for “Preventing Overdiagnosis: Winding Back the Harms of Too Much Medicine,” an annual convening of clinicians, academic types, health policy experts, medical journal editors, medical students and the concerned public, launched at Dartmouth College in 2013 following a series of provocative articles in the British Medical Journal.
The Columbus police fear the local chapter of Showing Up For Racial Justice Columbus, or SURJ Columbus. Three undercover officers were witnessed at the group’s August 19th Standing in Solidarity with Charlottesville event held at City Hall where they demanded the removal of the Christopher Columbus statue.
Human history is peppered with dreadful accounts of minority communities who were deliberately demonized before atrocities were committed against them. Though the global Muslim community is not under a clear and present danger, dark clouds are indeed gathering. The upsurge of belligerent Islamophobia and violent ethnic nationalism in the West, the mass deportation of refugees in US and other Western countries, and the institutional ethnic-cleansing of the Rohingya—a Muslim minority community in Myanmar—should raise red flags.
Yes, there are some Muslims out there who wreak havoc; who cause destruction of lives and properties only to get themselves, their people, and nations destroyed. Whether they are ISIS, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram or any other, they have been the fatal curse that destroyed or gave the pretext for mightier nations to invade and destroy many Muslim nations.
The Franklin County Green Party unequivocally condemns the attack on anti-racist and anti-fascist protesters yesterday in Charlottesville, Virginia and are saddened by the death and injuries. The Green Party is an anti-racist organization continually working to create a just and fair society for all.
The Green Party fully supports the fundamental right of counter-protesters to free speech, freedom of assembly and redress of grievances.
The Party holds, as the Black Caucus states, that “In recognition of the central role of racism in the creation of our country's governmental, social, and economic systems and the use of race as a means of dividing and destroying progressive movements for fundamental change, we are actively antiracist. We oppose institutional, interpersonal, and cultural racism.”
We vigorously condemn the President of the United States for using the phrase “on many sides” after a right-wing terrorist attack upon democratic progressive forces lawfully demonstrating. The President’s words embolden and empower the far right. Let our actions as a counter force to liberate the people.