In honor of Pride Month, singular acts of courage and "being brave, strong and gorgeous," enjoy the glad spectacle of four drag queens dolled up to kill, see Les Misérables, and crash Dear Leader's first visit to a Kennedy Center purportedly scrubbed of wokeness. Yet here they were - buoyant, sparkling, cheered by a crowd that moments before had loudly booed the ugly tyrant and his MAGA cohort. The queens' gist, said Mari Con Carne: "You can’t erase us."

The queens turned up for an evening already bursting with irony if any MAGA goons and losers were capable of it. Amidst a Pride Month he refused to recognize - and fierce pushback to his hate - the Bigot-In-Chief who already decimated a time-honored institution devoted to art and open-mindedness witlessly chose to attend a beloved show about an oppressed people fighting back against tyranny much like his.

Accompanied by the grotesque likes of Vance, Bondi, Loomer, RFK Jr., Kellyanne Conway and a fragile Gym Jordan who visibly cringed when he walked past four people who don't look like him, Trump et al were roundly booed by the modest crowd. There were also shouts of "Felon!" and "Rapist!" - what a time to be alive - along with a muted, incongruous chant of "USA!" on behalf of the cretins who are working so hard to destroy it.

In full, defiant finery, the four drag queens - Tara Hoot, Ricky Rosé, Vagenesis, and Mari Con Carne - were greeted by the audience with joyful whoops, cheers and applause as they sashayed in and took their seats below the presidential box. Their tickets had been donated by season ticket-holders through Qommittee, a national advocacy network of drag artists and allies led by survivors of high-profile hate crimes like the Pulse and Club Q mass shootings.

"It was delightful,” said Hoot, stressing their "message of inclusivity" but adding, "I love musicals. I mean, I’m a drag queen." "Kudos to all bringing art to the world," she said. "Unfortunately, there were some other people there too, but I think we brightened the audience as much as we could." In family story time events, she noted, "I often read books about being brave (and) true to who you are. Showing up (here) with my fellow drag stars allowed me to live those words. Here's to being brave, strong, and gorgeous."

Trump, ever uncouth, left before the lights came up. Still, Mari Con Carne felt it was "crucial" to be there before him. As a drag queen and an immigrant, "I wanted it to be known you can prevent us from performing on your stages, but you can’t erase us...We aren’t going anywhere and we will face you head-on with every ounce of courage we have." When Victor Hugo wrote Les Misérables, he was shocked by the silence of his compatriots before "the negation of all law, equilibrium resting on iniquity." This week's troupe of "delightfully audacious" drag queens might give him hope.

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This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

The post Sing Sing the Movie Gets Raves; Sing Sing the Prison Gets Off Easy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Susie Day.

We dedicate part of our Juneteenth special to remembering the life and legacy of the legendary actor, singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, who died in April at the age of 96. Belafonte appeared on Democracy Now! numerous times, and we feature two interviews. We begin with our 2011 interview at the Sundance Film Festival, where a documentary about his life, titled Sing Your Song, premiered, and discuss his political awakening and activism in detail. “Going into the South of the United States, listening to the voices of rural Black America, listening to the voices of those who sang out against the Ku Klux Klan and out against segregation, and women, who were the most oppressed of all, rising to the occasion to protest against their conditions, became the arena where my first songs were to emerge,” Belafonte recalled.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We dedicate part of our Juneteenth special to remembering the life and legacy of the legendary actor, singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, who died in April at the age of 96. Belafonte appeared on Democracy Now! numerous times, and we feature two interviews. We begin with our 2011 interview at the Sundance Film Festival, where a documentary about his life, titled Sing Your Song, premiered, and discuss his political awakening and activism in detail. “Going into the South of the United States, listening to the voices of rural Black America, listening to the voices of those who sang out against the Ku Klux Klan and out against segregation, and women, who were the most oppressed of all, rising to the occasion to protest against their conditions, became the arena where my first songs were to emerge,” Belafonte recalled.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We dedicate part of our Juneteenth special to remembering the life and legacy of the legendary actor, singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, who died in April at the age of 96. Belafonte appeared on Democracy Now! numerous times, and we feature two interviews. We begin with our 2011 interview at the Sundance Film Festival, where a documentary about his life, titled Sing Your Song, premiered, and discuss his political awakening and activism in detail. “Going into the South of the United States, listening to the voices of rural Black America, listening to the voices of those who sang out against the Ku Klux Klan and out against segregation, and women, who were the most oppressed of all, rising to the occasion to protest against their conditions, became the arena where my first songs were to emerge,” Belafonte recalled.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We remember the remarkable life of Harry Belafonte, the pioneering actor, singer and civil rights activist, who died at his home on Tuesday in New York at the age of 96. The son of Jamaican immigrants, Belafonte rose to stardom in the 1950s and became the first artist to sell a million records with his album Calypso. He was also the first African American actor to win an Emmy. Along with his growing fame, Belafonte became deeply involved in the civil rights movement. One of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest confidants, he helped to organize the March on Washington in 1963 and frequently raised money to bail activists out of jail and fund their activities throughout the South. Belafonte was also a longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy, calling for an end to the embargo against Cuba, supporting the anti-apartheid movement and opposing policies of war and global oppression. He spoke out against the U.S. invasion of Iraq and once called George W. Bush the “greatest terrorist in the world.” Harry Belafonte appeared on Democracy Now! numerous times over the years. In 2011, we spoke to him upon the premiere of Sing Your Song, a documentary about his life, and we begin our special by featuring an extended excerpt from our interview. “Going into the South of the United States, listening to the voices of rural Black America, listening to the voices of those who sang out against the Ku Klux Klan and out against segregation, and women, who were the most oppressed of all, rising to the occasion to protest against their conditions, became the arena where my first songs were to emerge,” Belafonte recalled.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The post Venezuelan Political Prisoner on Trial in Miami Refuses to “Sing” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Roger Harris.

Most prisoners with a get-out-of-jail-free card would have played it, but not Alex Saab. The Venezuelan diplomat has been incarcerated for two and a half years.

On June 12, 2020, Alex Saab was on a mission from Caracas to Tehran to procure supplies of food, fuel, and medicine denied the Venezuelans by sanctions imposed by the US. His plane was diverted to the island archipelago nation of Cabo Verde. When it landed on the tarmac, he was seized at Washington’s behest and has been imprisoned since.

Under pressure from the US, Cabo Verde defied findings by the regional ECOWAS Court of Justice and the United Nations Human Right Committee to free Alex Saab. As a special envoy of the Venezuelan government, he was supposed to be immune from arrest and detention under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Then on October 16, 2022, Saab was “extradited” – really “kidnapped” because the US does not have an extradition treaty with Cabo Verde – and imprisoned in Miami.

Washington’s embarrassingly feeble excuse for the forcible extraction of a foreign national to the US was that the special envoy was guilty of bilking the Venezuelan people.  Yet, as soon as Saab had been thrown into the federal penitentiary, the Department of Justice dropped their seven charges of money laundering.

The remaining charge of “conspiracy” to money launder is a prosecutor’s gift because the accused can’t use the fact that they did not commit the alleged crime as proof of innocence.

In fact, what the imperial power had perpetrated was an example of extra-territorial judicial overreach. Someone who is a foreigner and not in the US is being persecuted for an alleged crime committed in a foreign country. Only an entity that had arrogated to itself to be the world’s cop could pull off such an egregious action.

Surely, if Mr. Saab was indeed undermining the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the US would have been delighted. Such subversive activity would have been consonant with US’s own policy of regime-change to be achieved by applying sanctions. Yet it was Saab who was, by Washington’s own admission, instrumental in helping Venezuela circumvent these unilateral coercive measures by bringing humanitarian supplies from Iran in legal international trade.

Contrary to Washington’s colonialist pretext that Saab was wronging the Venezuelan people, the Caracas government has treated him as a national hero.

But perhaps the strongest argument for Saab’s sincerity is that the US government has admitted that the diplomat was targeted because he had information that Washington wanted. No lesser an authority than former US Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote: “It was important to get custody of him. This could provide a real roadmap for the US government to unravel the Venezuelan government’s illicit [sic] plans.”

Yet under torture in Cabo Verde and further incarceration in the US, Alex Saab has refused to “sing” and has maintained his allegiance to the democratically elected government of Venezuela. Instead of being reunited with his family, Alex Saab in still arguing for his right to diplomatic immunity and against his illegal detention.

If the US refuses to recognize special envoy Saab’s diplomatic immunity, the precedent will endanger the inviolability of diplomats worldwide.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Roger D. Harris.