Opinion

In an important step toward the economic isolation of Israel due to its genocide in Gaza, Norway's Government Pension Fund Global has decided to divest from yet more Israeli companies. 

 Norway's sovereign wealth fund is the world's largest, with total investments in Israel once estimated at $1.9 billion. The decision to divest was taken gradually but is consistent with the Norwegian government's growing solidarity with Palestine and rising criticism of Israel.

Killing from the sky has long offered the sort of detachment that warfare on the ground can’t match. Far from its victims, air power remains the height of modernity. And yet, as the monk Thomas Merton concluded in a poem, using the voice of a Nazi commandant, “Do not think yourself better because you burn up friends and enemies with long-range missiles without ever seeing what you have done.”

Friday, August 29-Saturday, August 30, 10am-4pm

Virtual Statewide Conference on Policing, Criminal Legal System, and Immigration. We have some amazing speakers who will touch on topics ranging from immigration, wrongful conviction, to policy, etc. Guest speaker: Eric King

If you have not already, you can register with the link below.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf0jZLhNLkXoFNJk3cK95m1elgL70YXvIjIpgclEOZfE1sJwA/viewform?usp=header

Imagine your town flattened overnight. No power. No water. Families trapped in rubble. For days, you wait for help that never seems to arrive.

The first thing that hit me in Gulfport, Mississippi, wasn’t the sight. It was the smell. Raw sewage from flooded treatment plants. Rotting seafood from capsized shrimp boats.

Diesel and gasoline spilled across the water. All mixed together in water so thick with debris it didn’t move like water anymore.

One of my shipmates handed me a jar of Vicks VapoRub. “Put it in your nose,” he said. “It’ll help.” It didn’t help enough.

What I saw looked like a scene out of an apocalyptic film. Whole neighborhoods gone. Homes ripped from their foundations and carried into the bayou.

Those that remained were filled with mud several feet high. I went building to building on search-and-rescue, marking walls with spray paint — an “X” and a number telling the world how many people, alive or dead, had been found inside.

It was devastating. It was lawlessness. And at times, it felt like we were the only ones left.

When trying to get a preview of what Zone In could do to Columbus’s most popular corridors and neighborhoods, it’s looking more and more likely this future of “density” will drastically alter Old North first. 

Old North is also known fondly by many a campus kid as “North Campus,” but those who have spent a lifetime here prefer Old North. What remains of its early-to-mid-20th century buildings stretch from Lane and High to Glen Echo Ravine. And in this popular corridor the last morsels of old-school Columbus live on, such as Dick’s Den, the (new) Blue Danube, and Ace of Cups, for example.  

But two large mixed-use developments separated by just a few hundred feet are moving forward on North High Street in Old North and there’s no way to stop them, says Seth Golding, an Old North activist and homeowner. Both developments also include apartment towers, and the tower proposed for Lane and High could reach 16-stories and not offer a single parking space, he says. Before Zone In, passed by City Council in 2024, the highest a developer could go on High Street near campus was six stories.

For GREEP Zoom #236, our beloved Poet Laureate MIMI GERMAN opens with her usual brilliant verse from “Where Grasses Bend."

We commemorate the passing of the great RICHARD LEE who founded Oaksterdam University, devoted to the cultivation of cannabis / marijuana & its immeasurable power.

We then get updated by "America’s Mayor” HEIDI LAMPERT about the battle for democracy in Waldport, Oregon, the Mayberry of the deep west coast.

Long-time activist MICKI LEADER shares her concerns about whether the 2026 election will be cancelled.

From radio host LYNN FEINERMAN we hear charges about so-called “Christians” who so deeply love to trash the preachings of the actual Christ.

Grassroots campaigner DOROTHY REIK warns that people with no human feelings are taking over the world with the view that the non-rich are a “burden.”

Legendary journalist DAVID SALTMAN tells of a network cohort who received a kidney from an anonymous donor whom he then honored with a legendary poem.