Free Press History
Act I of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1787 Don Giovanni (the opera is sung in Italian; in Spanish the character is known as “Don Juan”), LA Opera’s radiant season opener, is a sublime experience that made me feel glad to be alive, with some of the very best music ever composed for opera. Set in mid-17th century Seville, the story is about the legendary seducer, Don Giovanni (lustily played by tall, well-proportioned North Carolina baritone Lucas Meachem), who cuts a sensual swath across Europe.
Indeed, the number of Don Giovanni’s sexual “conquests” surpasses 1,800, which his much put-upon servant Leporello (the scene-stealing California bass-baritone Craig Colclough) lists in the funny “Catalogue Song,” wherein he sings the names of the countless women his “master” has bedded to the deserted Donna Elvira (New York mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard), after she has confronted her onetime lover. The lovers’ many names are cleverly projected on English scenic designer Es Devlin’s moving set.
If the whole state of Vermont, the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Seattle, Minneapolis, Albuquerque, Davenport, Iowa, and even Oberlin, Ohio can change the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day – could Columbus, Ohio be far behind? Sadly, yes.
Following the Ameriflora controversy in 1992 – the international flower festival at Franklin Park celebrating 500 years since Christopher Columbus invaded North America – Native Americans descended on Columbus City Council playing drums and chanting. Council members refused to change the name of Columbus Day, but as an immediate concession to the victims of genocide initiated by Columbus and to make the Native Americans go away, agreed that a week starting on Columbus Day would be designated Indigenous People’s Week. But we never heard anything about that again.
There were some victories: our city hasn’t held a Columbus Day parade since the 90s, the Santa Maria is thankfully gone, and activists successfully prevented a Christopher Columbus statue made by a Russian sculptor, six feet taller than the Statue of Liberty, from being erected downtown.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” stated George Santayana. We’ve heard this often the past three years, mostly in reference to the rise of Nazi Germany. The rigged U.S. election system and antiquated and undemocratic Electoral College system has produced the most “perfect” presidential pomposity in political history. The genocide is not as overt but getting closer as more immigrants are interned at our borders while their kids are stripped from their families and caged. We need to understand that all the horrendous draconian laws, corporate dominance, and wealth inequality we face now did not begin with Donald Trump. He is just the predictable outcome.
2020 is almost here. It’s not the end of the world as we know it, just the end of a dismal decade that continues its incremental climb to inverted fascism in the US. The planet is in peril.
January 25, 2001 - Imagine Columbus Alive's surprise last week when Nigel Rosser, a British journalist and reported confidant of the royal family, contacted us to inquire about Prince Andrew's central Ohio connection. Rosser had read two award-winning Alive stories--"The Shapiro Murder File" and "Spook Air"--and wanted to chat about our own Leslie Wexner and his top aide, the mysterious Jeffrey E. Epstein.
Rosser's article, published in the London Evening Standard on January 22, described Prince Andrew's recent behavior as "erratic" and "greatly upset[ing]" the royal family. The Prince has been so busy partying with his new American pals, even his ex-wife Fergie is complaining.
Who's to blame for Andrew's failure to babysit for his daughters Beatrice and Eugenie, according to Rosser's article? None other than Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been spotted in the Prince's company at hotspots-of-the-rich-and-famous around the world. Ghislaine is the daughter of the infamous financier Robert Maxwell, who died after falling overboard from his yacht in 1991.
Police accidently release a report linking
Leslie Wexner and the Mob
by Bob Fitrakis
The ghost of Arthur Shapiro—a prominent local attorney who was slain in a 1985 “mob-style murder”—continues to haunt the City of Columbus. Shapiro’s doomed soul was resurrected recently when the Columbus Division of Police released the controversial—and once believed destroyed—document investigating his death.
Columbus Alive obtained a copy of the “Shapiro Homicide Investigation: Analysis and Hypothesis” report through a public records request on Friday. As previously reported in Alive, the report confirms that the name of central Ohio billionaire Leslie Wexner was linked “with associates reputed to be organized crime figures.” The names of businessman Jack Kessler, former Columbus City Council President and current Wexner associate Jerry Hammond and current City Council member Les Wright also appear in the report.
Originally Published Columbus Alive 4-22-1999
Something’s rotten at Rickenbacker Port Authority. Maybe it’s just the stench of the bankrupt corpse of Southern Air Transport, or the moldering smell of the $3 million the state pumped into the notorious airline before it folded.
Ohio taxpayers are among the more than 800 creditors now lined up to file claims against “Spook Air.” SAT filed for bankruptcy in Columbus on October 1, 1998, the same day the Central Intelligence Agency Inspector General issued a report linking the cargo hauler to allegations of drug-running in connection with U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
Once lauded as a coup for central Ohio development, landing Southern Air Transport’s business at Rickenbacker eventually turned into a nightmare, as the enterprise became mired in massive debt and was closed under a cloud of suspicion about its true activities. Just how and why one of the world’s most notorious airlines ended up in Columbus in the mid-1990s is a story that hasn’t been fully examined until now.
Taken together, the revelations show Republicans – in state and county government, and in the Ohio Republican Party – were determined to undermine and suppress Democratic turnout by a wide variety of methods.
The revelations were included in affidavits gathered for an election challenge lawsuit filed Monday at the Ohio Supreme Court. Ohio's Republican Electoral College representatives are also to meet at noon, Monday, at the State House, even though the presidential recount, requested by the Green and Libertarian Parties, is only beginning the same day.
Why would the FBI assert that the newly-inaugurated governor of Ohio is "completely controlled"? Media sources like Life magazine noted the governor’s alleged ties to organized crime and the Mafia in specific. Gov. Rhodes’ FBI file, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, suggests that it may be because of the FBI’s extensive knowledge of Rhodes’ involvement in the numbers rackets in the late 1930’s that the Bureau could count on his cooperation.
But the end comes amidst bitter dispute over official certification of impossible voter turnout numbers, over the refusal of Ohio's Republican Supreme Court Chief Justice to recuse himself from crucial court challenges involving his own re-election campaign, over the Republican Secretary of State's refusal to show up for a noticed deposition, over apparent tampering with tabulation machines, over more than 100,000 provisional and machine-rejected ballots left uncounted, over major discrepancies in certified vote counts and turnout ratios, and over a wide range of unresolved disputes that continue to leave the true outcome of Ohio's presidential vote in serious doubt.