Global

One of the very best things a work of art can do is to give the voiceless a public voice in
order to be heard. And award-winning playwright Preston Choi does that, loud and clear,
in his great new This is Not a True Story. In this thought provoking, highly entertaining
one-act play the characters of Cio-Cio-San (here called CioCio and played by Julia Cho)
from Giacomo Puccini’s 1904 Japan-set opera Madame Butterfly, Kim (Zandi De Jesus)
from the 1989 musical Miss Saigon, and the real-life Takako Konishi (Rosie Narasaki –
more below on Konishi, who has a bizarre tie-in to the Coen Brothers’ 1996 movie
Fargo) collide with one another, and especially in CioCio and Kim’s cases, with their
Caucasian creators. Hilarity, poignancy and above all, insight into the damage that racial
stereotyping causes ensues.
Kim, of course, is based on the Italian composer Puccini’s Cio-Cio-San in the adaptation
of Madame Butterfly that’s updated and reset in Vietnam in 1975 in Miss Saigon, with
music by Frenchman Claude-Michel Schönberg, book by Tunisian-born Alain Boublil
and Schönberg, lyrics by Boublil and Wisconsin-born Richard Maltby Jr. Note that while

What if the "epidemic of coups" in West and Central Africa is not that at all, but a direct outcome of outright revolutionary movements, similar to the anti-colonial movements that liberated most African nations from the yoke of Western colonialism throughout the 20th century? 

 Whether this is the case or not, we are unlikely to find out anytime soon, simply because the voices of these African nations are largely and deliberately muted. 

 In order for us to understand the real motives behind the spate of military takeovers in West and Central Africa - eight since 2020 - we are, sadly, compelled to read about it in Western media. 

Our GREE-GREE #149 starts by commemorating the dual 9/11 catastrophes of 2001’s exploding World Trade Centers and the 1973 CIA murder of Salvador Allende, the duly elected Socialist leader of Chile.  [Robert Reich’s superb piece on this horrible coup is not to be missed].  The combination of these two world-changing crimes marks us with a dual tragedy we still struggle to overcome.

With the great NORM STOCKWELL of progressive.org we go down the rabbit hole of the Wisconsin GOP’s latest assault on the state supreme court.  Long-time Wisconsin pol CHUCK CHVALA deepens our understanding of this insane situation, while STEVE CARUSO fills us in on the parallel madness in Ohio.

Legendary radio talk host DENNIS BERNSTEIN of KPFA’s Flashpoints Show adds his usual brilliance to the electoral mix.

Then LUCY HOCHSCHARTNER of Maine’s Pine Tree Alliance explains that state’s grassroots Montana movement to take over its two much-hated private utilities and create the nation’s first totally statewide public owned electric company.

RAY MCCLENDON of Georgia chimes in with his powerful perspective on grassroots organizing.  

The humiliation of Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers in the occupied city of Al-Khalil (Hebron) on July 10 was not the first such episode. Sadly, it will not be the last. 

 Indeed, the stripping of five women in front of their children, parading them naked around their family home and then stealing their jewelry by an Israeli military unit, was not a random act. It deserves deep reflection. 

 Palestinians rightly understood the event - investigated at length by the Israeli rights group B'Tselem, in a report published on September 5 - as an intentional Israeli policy.