Free Press is committed to documenting the people taken by ICE

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested, detained, deported, and/or imprisoned many people that it has unilaterally determined to be undesirables.  At first, they claimed they would deport only criminals, but it has already gone beyond that.  We at the Free Press consider every person who has been sent to the Tecoluca (El Salvador prison), Guantanamo naval base, or detained in other prisons throughout the country to be innocent until proven guilty. We will include students who have been expelled for protesting genocide.  It appears the government will revoke Visa's to get rid of undesirable students.  This article will be updated as long as is necessary.

Familiar tale gracefully blends feminism and fantasy

Feminism has a crucial role to play in modern life, but I sometimes wish it would leave our fairy tales alone. The results of its revisionist meddling are too often unconvincing and unsatisfying.

Remember last year’s Maleficent? It turned an age-old story on its head by revealing that the fairy (Angelina Jolie) who turned a princess into a “Sleeping Beauty” was not evil at all. No, she was merely wronged and misunderstood. Worst of all, we learned that the somnambulant princess could not be awakened by a kiss from the handsome prince, but only by a motherly peck from that same fairy.

How heartwarming. And how utterly unromantic.

Thank goodness Disney’s new live-action version of Cinderella doesn’t wear its feminism on its sleeve. It has nods to modern sensibilities, to be sure, but they’re handled with a lighter touch.

Doctor songs on Everybody Knows

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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!

Listen here

Listen live at 11pm Fridays, November 7 and 14 streaming at wgrn.org or on the radio at 91.9FM
and
Mondays at 2pm streaming November 10 and November 17 at wcrsfm.org or on the radio at 92.7 or 98.3FM

UAE deported a Palestinian engineer for refusing to drink Pepsi

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

The Facts About Kratom

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. 

Torture and Rape Are All in A Day’s Work for Israel’s Defenders

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.

Onward Christian Soldiers

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.

Defend the right to free speech on campus

Details about event

Friday, November 7, 12pm
Thompson Statue, OSU Oval

OSU students’ free speech rights are under attack, and they need your support! The Ted Carter administration and the Board of Trustees are capitulating to the demands in Trump’s authoritarian compact and over-complying to the disastrous Senate Bill 1, stripping students of their identity centers and avenues of expression. Activists have been silenced, students have been disenrolled, and the threat of politically-motivated University retaliation hangs over both students and faculty. This is why we need you!

On 11/7, an action will be held at the Thompson Statue on the Oval. Students call on the community to show their support for those targeted by administrative action, and to fight for students’ right to free speech on campus.

Tell OSU to reject Trump’s ultimatum and to stand up for all Buckeyes!

Verdict from the People: Why the Gaza Tribunal is about Accountability, Not Symbolism

In the face of the international legal and political systems' paralyzing silence and utter failure to hold Israel accountable for its genocide in Gaza, international civil society has refused to stand idly by. Instead, it continues to forge a path, presenting essential working models for what true justice in Palestine must look like.

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