For whatever reason, some mistakenly perceive the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, as liberal, progressive and even ‘pro-Palestinian’. Of course, none of this is true. This misconstrued depiction of an essentially Zionist and anti-Palestinian newspaper tells of a much bigger story of how confusing Israeli politics is, and how equally confused many of us are in understanding the Israeli political discourse.

On November 28, newly-elected Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of Al-Khalil (Hebron) with hundreds of soldiers and many illegal Jewish settlers, including the who’s who of Israel’s extremists. 

On Wednesday morning (Dec. 8, 2021), a joint coalition of Ohio advocacy groups, including the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, Ohio Environmental Council, and the Council of American Islamic Relations-Ohio, rallied for fair maps in front of the Ohio Supreme Court following oral arguments in the three lawsuits filed against Ohio’s illegal, partisan, and extremely gerrymandered maps. The three challenges to the maps are Ohio Organizing Collaborative v. Ohio Redistricting Commission, Bria Bennett v. Ohio Redistricting Commission, and League of Women Voters of Ohio v. Ohio Redistricting Commission. The rally predominantly featured Black and Muslim plaintiffs and advocates, whose communities will be denied fair representation due to the illegal legislative maps. 

Below this introduction is the obituary for Sarah Michelle Burris, who passed from a drug overdose in October. The obituary was written by her mother who wrote it “early one morning after not sleeping very much. The words are straight from my heart.”

“The love I have for my daughter never changed throughout the addiction,” Rhonda Burris told the Free Press. “I loved her every day the same as the day she was born. I miss her so very much, we all do. She was a beautiful soul.”

Sarah’s obituary first appeared in a London, Ohio, weekly paper, where Sarah was born and raised. We reprint it here because it reflects what we are learning from the “Saint of Sullivant Avenue” – Esther Flores.

Flores works tirelessly at her drop-in safehouse to take care of the “Street Sisters” who travel up and down Sullivant. Esther knew Sarah and used some of the exact same words to describe Sarah as her mother did. “She was a beautiful soul. Kind and polite.”

Sarah’s mother confirmed that her daughter’s battle against addiction was mostly fought on Sullivant Avenue, a long-time hotspot for trap houses.

The exclusion of certain countries from the U.S. “democracy summit” is not a side issue. It is the very purpose of the summit. And excluded countries have not been excluded for failing to meet the standards of behavior of those that were invited or the one doing the inviting. Invitees didn’t even have to be countries, as even a U.S. backed failed coup leader from Venezuela has been invited. So have representatives of Israel, Iraq, Pakistan, DRC, Zambia, Angola, Malaysia, Kenya, and — critically — pawns in the game: Taiwan and Ukraine.

What game? The weapons sales game. Which is the whole point. Look at the U.S. State Department website on the Democracy Summit. Right at the top: “‘Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it.’ –President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.”

The Columbus Dispatch is suffering a four-year free-fall in circulation/readership, according to documents obtained exclusively from the Alliance for Audited Media.

The Columbus market is rapidly becoming a news desert, that is a place where news readership is dwindling and where increasing numbers of residents are either uninformed or poorly informed about their communities, the state, the United States and other nations.

What people know about the world around them is increasingly random via social media such as Facebook and websites that often lack verification and editing. This may be affecting our politics adversely as people are increasingly motivated by imagery and personality cults rather than by facts, reasoning and science.

Until around 2006, Ohio's government and its political leaders were held accountable by the major Ohio daily newspapers, who often would ardently investigate wrong-doing. The Coingate scandal, where Ohio taxpapers' money was invested in rare coins, led by the Toledo Blade and the Dispatch, resulted in Democrats winning all but one state administrative office and control of the Ohio House.