“Americans project their own fears onto Russia, a country that is a paradox of deftness, might, and profound weakness—unshakably steady, yet somehow always teetering on the verge of collapse.”
source: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/putins-game/546548/
This is my adorable, brave, intelligent father yesterday at the rally he organized, American Muslims Against Isis. #peaceformuslims (at Times Square – 42nd Street)
Islamophobia comes from ignorance, misunderstanding, and lack of empathy. This guy rules, obviously. He is courageous and amazing. But boy, I wish there were people like him -everywhere-.
I visited home last week. My family lives in Cranberry, a little suburb of Pittsburgh that has rapidly developed, population-wise and economically, in the last decade. 28,098 people reside there, and 94% of them are white. 3% of them are Asian. There are 351 black people in the entire township, and 107 “other race”. (data from http://cranberrybusinesshub.org/217/Demographics) It is noticeably homogeneous to me, almost creepily so, but that is because my daily norm is living in Boston – not exactly a pillar of racial harmony, »
Obama’s not coming for your guns, you morons. The corporatist, right-wing agenda and climate change are what you should fear. Instead, you’re being played.
The good news is that everything that is said about muslims today, that they’re not american, that they’re fearful, that they’re foreign that they don’t belong here, everything that is said about muslims today was said about jews in the 40s and 50s, was said about catholics at the end of the 19th century, and those two religions, through the passage of time, through the slow building of relationships, through the integration of story became very much apart of the religious fabric of this country. The same thing is going to happen to Muslims. The bad news is, then we’ll find someone else to hate.
When I headed to Osaka a few months ago, my friend Nick Coldicott, who lives in Tokyo, urged me to visit what he contends is the best bourbon bar in the world: Rogin’s Tavern. Knowing Nick’s command of the spirits universe, I take a commuter train out to Moriguchi, an obscure little town about half an hour from the center of Osaka. When I emerge from the station I can see a neon light spelling “Rogin’s” in English. Inside it is dim, with a long wooden bar backed by hundreds of bottles. American jazz comes from an ancient-looking jukebox in the rear.
Nearly every bottle is bourbon, though there is a smattering of rye and sour mash. I can see bottles from the 1800s next to obscure export bottlings of Jim Beam next to standard-issue Jack Daniel’s. Seiichiro Tatsumi, an older »
The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.
I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this »
Rather than promote the author of a failing strategy, we need a C.I.A. director who will halt the agency’s creeping militarization and restore it to what it does best: collecting human intelligence. It is an intelligence agency, not a lightweight version of Joint Special Operations Command. And until America wins the intelligence war, missiles will continue to hit the wrong targets, kill too many civilians and drive young men into the waiting arms of our enemies.
