YouTube is never short of videos showing police and security guards pushing their weight around enforcing a ridiculous notion that the way to catch terrorists is to harass photographers in public spaces. This “Post 9/11″ thinking, is also “Pre-Google Street View” thinking, and it HAS TO STOP! If someone says “in this post 9/11 world […]
Continue readingTag: United States
gay persons of color: Syrian lesbian blogger abducted in Damascus (update)
Fellow blogger, Amina Araf, who writes the popular A Gay Girl in Damascus under the pseudonym, Amina Abdallah, was reportedly kidnapped by armed men on Monday night. Holding dual American and Syrian citizenship, Ms. Araf has over the past few weeks des…
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: War on Drugs
It’s hard to run a country with everyone squawking in your ear about how you have to be just like them, even if they are failures. The war on drugs is a failure, but Washington is pulling strings in Ottawa and Mexico, and even London too. – If the Pentagon is now taking acts of […]
Continue readinggay persons of color: Watch: San Francisco Giants "It Gets Better" video
On Wednesday, the San Francisco Giants became the first professional sports franchise to release a video for the It Gets Better Project. Featuring pitchers Barry Zito, Sergio Romo, and Matt Cain, center fielder Andres Torres, and hitting coach Hensley …
Continue readingObama and the Middle East—time for the Yankee to go home?
I realize that U.S. President Barack Obama is now campaigning for the 2012 election. And I realize also the importance of Jewish support to his campaign. And I recognize the need for politicians to pander to important constituencies. But did he have to…
Continue readinggay persons of color: Watch: George Takei vs. Tennessee
I’m not sure if it is ironic or fitting that Tennessee, the American state that is home to the National Civil Rights Museum built around the former Lorraine Motel in which Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, is also where a propo…
Continue readinggay persons of color: Watch: Steve Nash endorses marriage equality with video
“A growing number of professional athletes are speaking out in support of gay and lesbian couples getting married. I’m proud to be one of them. Join me and the super-majority of New Yorkers who support marriage equality.”Steve Nash, Canadian profession…
Continue readinggay persons of color: Watch: Holly Elle – "Freak" music video
Holly Elle is a Canadian independent recording artist based out of Nashville, Tennessee, who in 2010 became extremely disturbed by the media coverage of one teen suicide after another in the United States. As she wrote to me, “It consumed my thoughts d…
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: How to Eat in the Most Obese County in the United States
Let’s start with an appetizer: One thing you need to know before going to the Mississippi Delta is what a Kool-Aid pickle is — and how to make it. 1. Pour pickle juice from a jar of pickles into a bowl. 2. Add Kool-Aid to pickle juice. 3. Pour pickle juice back over pickles. 4. […]
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Obama Gets it Right on Palestine
President Obama understands what I wrote three and a half years ago, that ending the Israeli Palestinian conflict depends on recognizing that “the solution essentially comes down to understanding the most and least that each side can accept”.We could a…
Continue readinggay persons of color: Former baseball player, Billy Bean, poses for equal rights
Former Major League Baseball player Billy Bean, who made news in 1999 when he came out openly as gay four years after he retired from the sport, has posed for the NOH8 Campaign, which raises awareness and funds for gay rights causes, including ending C…
Continue readinggay persons of color: Phoenix Suns President Rick Welts comes out; players featured in pro-gay PSA
The past few days have been momentous for American professional basketball fans, and, in particular, those of the Phoenix Suns, whose President and CEO Rick Welts bravely came out openly as gay over the weekend. According to a Sunday New York Times art…
Continue readinggay persons of color: CNN’s Don Lemon comes out
“It’s about the worst thing you can be in black culture. You’re taught you have to be a man; you have to be masculine. In the black community they think you can pray the gay away.” CNN Anchor Don LemonAlthough Don Lemon had not made a secret of his…
Continue readinggay persons of color: Carolina Panthers linebacker Nic Harris in support of marriage equality
Nic Harris, linebacker for the Carolina Panthers, has come out in support of equal rights by participating in the NOH8 Campaign, which is a photographic silent protest created by Adam Bouska and partner Jeff Parshley in direct response to the discrimin…
Continue readingReflections on the murder of Osama bin Laden
At the end of the Second World War, the Americans and their allies captured a pack of Nazis, an assortment of the most evil men on Earth. They could have lined them up against a wall and shot them and there would have been little argument. But, as the …
Continue readinggay persons of color: American Navy preparing to allow marriage equality on bases
Chaplains in the American Navy will be permitted to officiate at same-sex marriage and civil union ceremonies on base, once the military’s ban on gays serving openly, DADT (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell), takes effect, according to an April 13 memorandum, par…
Continue readinggay persons of color: We Who Feel Differently
People are not provoked by those who are different. What is more provoking is our insecurity: When you say, “I am so sorry but I am different.” That’s much more provoking than saying “I am different,” or “I have something to tell you, I can…
Continue readingMeasuring democracy
It wouldn’t surprise anyone if they were told that the rich have more influence on government than the rest of us. Some scholars in the U.S. have gone further than assume this, they have actually measured it, and the results are intriguing.
Professor …
Continue readingEnormous Thriving Plants: United States becoming Sodom & Gommorah!
Will this be the century that this particular bit of right-wing craziness comes true? We report, you decide!Pat’s ironically correct about one thing, though: It doesn’t take an “ordinary scholar” to arrive at his conclusions. Far, far from it.
Continue readingEnormous Thriving Plants: United States becoming Sodom & Gommorah!
Will this be the century that this particular bit of right-wing craziness comes true? We report, you decide! Pat’s ironically correct about one thing, though: It doesn’t take an “ordinary scholar” to arrive at his conclusions. Far, far from it.
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