Najla Said gives a dramatic reading of one section of her play entitled "Palestine," describing how her life was changed after visiting Gaza as a teenaged girl, along with her father, the late Edward Said, who was a Palestinian activist.
Sting has written a Huffpo article declaring the "war on drugs" to be a failure:
Everyone knows the War on Drugs has failed. It's time to step out of our comfort zones, acknowledge the truth -- and challenge our leaders ... and ourselves ... to change.How is this "war" a failure? Sting refers to an opinion piece by the Drug Policy Alliance that sets forth the following facts:
Consider the consequences of drug prohibition today: 500,000 people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails for nonviolent drug-law violations; 1.8 million drug arrests last year; tens of billions of taxpayer dollars expended annually to fund a drug war that 76% of Americans say has failed; millions now marked for life as former drug felons; many thousands dying each year from drug overdoses that have more to do with prohibitionist policies than the drugs themselves, and tens of thousands more needlessly infected with AIDS and Hepatitis C because those same policies undermine and block responsible public-health policies.
McClatchy has published a video and a written summary of conservatives' recent efforts to rewrite history. This evidence-free approach to history is surreal. How can this possibly be happening? It is apparent that these rewrites of history are evidence of the confirmation bias running at full throttle. I recently came across this vivid description of this phenomenon in a book called A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives (2006), by Cordelia Fine:
Reasoning is the vain brain's of . . . powerful protectorate. This might seem a little odd. Isn't reasoning supposed to be the compass that guides us toward the truth, not saves us from it? It seems not--particularly when our ego is under attack. In fact, the best we can say for our gift of thinking in these circumstances is that we do at least recognize that conclusions cannot be drawn out of thin air: we need a bit of evidence to support our case. The problem is that we behave like a smart lawyer searching for evidence to bolster his client's case, rather than a jury searching for the truth. As we've seen, memory is often the overzealous secretary who assists in this process by hiding or destroying files that harbor unwanted information. Only when enough of the objectionable stuff has been shredded dare we take a look. Evidence that supports your case is quickly accepted, and the legal assistants are sent out to find more of the same. However, evidence that threatens reason's most important client--you--is subjected to grueling cross-examination. Accuracy, validity, and plausibility all come under attack on the witness stand. The case is soon won. A victory for justice and truth, you think, conveniently ignoring the fact that yours was the only lawyer in the courtroom.
(Page 13) Fine adds this additional description toward the end of her book:Evidence that fits with our beliefs is quickly waved through the mental border control. Counter-evidence, on the other hand, must submit to close interrogation and even then will probably not be allowed in. As a result, people can wind up holding their beliefs even more strongly after seeing counter-evidence. It's as if we think, "Well, if that's the best that the other side can come up with then I really must be right." This phenomenon, called "belief polarization," may help to explain why attempting to disillusion people of their perverse misconceptions is so often futile.
(Page 108)This Rube Goldberg Machine Youtube video has certainly made the rounds--almost 11 million views--and deservedly so! This is extremely well-concocted and imaginative. Turn up the music and watch it at full-screen mode.
Frank Rich believes that he has isolated the source of the anxiety and anger displayed by many Tea Party demonstrators: They see themselves as "white" and they feel the shifting demographics of the United States. Many of them are hurling invectives at civil rights hero John Lewis, a gay representative, Barney Frank and Emanuel Cleaver, an African American representative from Missouri.
The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from. They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white.I'm sure that the Tea Party members would not appreciate my partial solution: Stop thinking in terms of "race," and start thinking of yourself as African, no matter who you are (here's good evidence of your African heritage). Truly, we should really embrace our common African heritage, and focus instead on the shocking same-ness of human beings. Then we'll have one fewer idiotic reason for hating each other. With regard to the gay "problem," Tea Party members need to get serious about biology. Same sex relations are ubiquitous among many other species of animals, not just human animals. Almost everything about us is something we share with most other humans. It is critical that we start thinking in those terms. Though he has done some highly questionable things in his life, I do believe that Bill Clinton got it exactly right during this 2007 speech.