The recent arrest of an American lawyer by the heavy-handed Rwandan government has human rights implications for the resource war in neighboring eastern Congo. Eve Ensler, who wrote "The Vagina Monologues" and is now a major advocate for Congolese women suffering sexual violence, says the Rwandan government is part of the problem when it comes to ending the violence against women.
Source: Truthout
At a dinner party, an ever-so-proper aristocrat who had been at the British evacuation of Dunkirk 60 years ago, remained tightlipped despite intense questioning from the other guests about what he had seen there. Finally, he shuddered at the memory and exclaimed, “The noise, my dear, and the people!”
An apocryphal story, perhaps, but the high-falutin’ Supreme Court of the United States has the same attitude toward America – this would be such a great country if it wasn’t for all the noise and people.
On a May 29th national day of action, Burlington, Vermont residents came together to protest SB 1070, a racist law in Arizona that allows and encourages racial profiling. This act requires law enforcement officials to check the documentation of any and all persons who look suspicious and or look like immigrants. Protest participants in Burlington wore signs, chanted and publicly spoke out against the Arizona law.
Source: The Independent
Since we first prowled the savannahs of Africa, human beings have displayed a few overpowering and ineradicable impulses—for food, for sex, and for drugs. Every human society has hunted for its short cuts to an altered state: The hunger for a chemical high, low, or pleasingly new shuffle sideways is universal. Peer back through history, and it’s everywhere. Ovid said drug-induced ecstasy was a divine gift. The Chinese were brewing alcohol in prehistory and cultivating opium by 700 A.D. Cocaine was found in clay-pipe fragments from William Shakespeare’s house. George Washington insisted American soldiers be given whiskey every day as part of their rations. Human history is filled with chemicals, come-downs, and hangovers.
As soccer stars and fans converge in South Africa for the World Cup, this video looks into the Cape Town slums to investigate reports that people are being displaced to make way for the games.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019