Global

Along with William Shakespeare’s Richard III, Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto are the stage’s most famous disabled characters. Like Victor Hugo’s Quasimodo, they are hunchbacks who share with King Richard, as the Bard wrote, being “rudely stamp'd… deformed, unfinish'd…” and unable to “strut before a wanton ambling nymph.” (Verdi’s 1851 opera, with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, is actually based on an 1832 play by Hugo, Le Roi s’amuse, which was banned after a single performance because it criticized royalty.)

Rigoletto is a figure of fun - not only because cruel people take perverse delight in mocking the disabled (like Trump despicably mimicking a NY Times reporter with a disability), but because Rigoletto is also the court jester of the Duke of Mantua. (In LA Opera’s May 27-June 3 performances, Italian baritone Ambrogio Maestri was Rigoletto while from May 12-19 Spanish baritone Juan Jesus Rodriguez played the part. New Jersey tenor Michael Fabiano was the Duke May 27-June 3, while Mexican tenor Arturo Chacon-Cruz had the role May 12-19.)

Five years ago, five activists and I set up a protest action at the Wendy’s restaurant located on South High Street in Columbus, Ohio. We lined up on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant with a 30-foot-long banner that stated, “Wendy’s Stop the Exploitation, Join the Fair Food Program.”

Customers did not turn away or stop driving into the parking lot, but when they sat at the outdoor dining area, they would shout out, “What’s wrong with Wendy’s?”

That’s the problem: not many people know what’s wrong with Wendy’s. It is necessary to reiterate the reason that larger and larger groups of farm workers and consumers demand that Wendy’s join the Fair Food Program.

By David Swanson

“Memorial Day is a time to remember, appreciate, and honor the selfless patriots who gave the ultimate sacrifice in service to freedom. At a time when our country seems so divided, we must not forget that it is because of their service and sacrifice that we live in the most free and prosperous nation on Earth.” —Congressman Tom Garrett

It would be difficult to count all of the lies in the above statement. Let’s just highlight a few.

Let’s start with “most free.”

In a recent article titled ‘Challenges for Resolving Complex Conflicts’, I pointed out that existing conflict theory pays little attention to the extinction-causing conflict being ongoingly generated by human over-consumption in the finite planetary biosphere (and, among other outcomes, currently resulting in 200 species extinctions daily). I also mentioned that this conflict is sometimes inadequately identified as a conflict caused by capitalism’s drive for unending economic growth in a finite environment.

I would like to explain the psychological origin of this biosphere-annihilating conflict and how this origin has nurtured the incredibly destructive aspects of capitalism (and socialism, for that matter) from the beginning. I would also like to explain what we can do about it.

Iran’s radical Marxist cult Mohajedeen e Khalq, better known by its acronym MEK, is somewhat reminiscent of the Israel Lobby’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in that it operates somewhat in the shadows and is nevertheless able to punch well beyond its weight by manipulating politicians and understanding how American government functions on its dark side. MEK promotes itself by openly supporting a very popular hardline policy of “democratic opposition” advocating “regime change” for Iran while also successfully selling its reform credentials, i.e. that it is no longer a terrorist group. This latter effort apparently convinced then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on 2013 as she and President Barack responded to the group’s affability campaign by delisting MEK from the government list of terrorist organizations.

This shift in attitude towards MEK was a result of several factors. First, everyone in Washington and the Establishment hates Iran. And second, the Executive Order 13224, which designates Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization, ipso facto defines any group fighting against it as one of the good guys, justifying the change

"Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person."-- Anonymous

In 2010 the pro-corporate 5/4 United States Supreme Court decided, in the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission ruling that favored multibillionaire corporate elites and their trans-national corporations by making it easier for them to steal US elections by allowing unlimited, anonymous monetary “contributions”/bribes to both major US political parties, political action groups and the many politicians who were then beholden to their newest corporate paymasters.

Gina Haspel has now been confirmed as the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by a Senate vote of 54 to 45. She had previously been approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee by 10 votes to 5, with six Democrats joining all but three of the committee’s Republicans. Haspel seems fully qualified in terms of her experience to do the job, though it is admittedly difficult to make that judgement because her full professional biography has not been revealed by CIA. Claims by supporters seeking to enhance her record that she was “under cover” for 32 years are meaningless as many officers who serve at Agency Headquarters in Langley have that status.

I would like to tell you something about human depravity and illustrate just how widespread it is among those we often regard as ‘responsible’. I am going to use the Democratic Republic of the Congo as my example.

As I illustrate and explain what has happened to the Congo and its people during the past 500 years, I invite you to consider my essential point: Human depravity has no limit unless people like you (hopefully) and me take some responsibility for ending it. Depravity, barbarity and violent exploitation will not end otherwise because major international organizations (such as the UN), national governments and corporations all benefit from it and are almost invariably led by individuals too cowardly to act on the truth.

The Congo

Prior to 1482, the area of central Africa now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was part of the Kingdom of the Kongo. It was populated by some of the greatest civilizations in human history.

Slavery

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The U.S.-trained military's coup-installed government has begun its fifth year in power confronting pro-election activists in the streets, a troubled economy, and widespread cynicism over plans to dominate this Buddhist-majority country after polls next February.

Fifteen protest leaders, who demand elections this year, were charged with sedition and other serious crimes on May 24 after leading hundreds of activists who were stopped while trying to march to the prime minister's office on May 22.

"We have tried everything, but in the end, we might not be able to bring change and a return to democracy," said Rangsiman Rome, one of the arrested leaders who reluctantly called off their "People Who Want Elections" march after hours of confrontation in the street.

Some had mocked Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha -- who led the May 22, 2014 coup when he was army chief -- by wearing face masks portraying him as a long-nosed Pinocchio.