Category: for Raz

peer pressure and audacity

Bill Maher has an interview in Time (June 5, 2006) in which he laments people’s reluctance to be provocative:
“I wouldn’t say there’s censorship in this country. But there’s a lot of peer pressure. Because when anybody says anything that’s the least bit feather ruffling, everybody just goes nuts. If anybody in this country is forced to undergo a single … Read more...

Jill Carroll

is a graduate of UMass’ Journalism Department. Her story was noted by the Poynter group’s weekly watch on media.
“Our Jill details her personality, commitment, and personal courage. I’ve been wondering about courage, recently. One definition says to face danger or pain without showing fear, another says to face the same with self-possession.
The Christian Science Monitor … Read more...

Raz sports an EU hat

Now, if they had just waited a month I could have been there for this historic vote!
“Bulgaria, Romania gain EU entry
Both countries still need to reforms to ensure membership
STRASBOURG, France (AP) — The European Parliament on Wednesday approved the entry of Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union in 2007, but said both countries still need to … Read more...

a hopeful sign?

Acording to this opinion piece, “claims that evangelicals have hijacked the nation’s politics are greatly exaggerated. In fact, polling data show that President Bush’s political base is not religious but economic, the group he jokingly referred to as ‘the haves and the have mores.’
“The General Social Survey found that 20 percent of American voters have family incomes of … Read more...

control room

Raz is gonna love this documentary. Wish he was here to watch it with us tonight, but maybe we can see it together once he’s back in the country.
The line that struck me the most was Hassan, talking about how the American people will defeat the American empire. Not only are we, perhaps, the only ones who can, … Read more...

war stories

“Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience,” is aimed at preserving stories from the battlegrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“War stories, after all, occupy one of literature’s longest, weightiest shelves, and American fighting men, from Ulysses S. Grant to Anthony Swofford, have set down their battle-forged memoirs, but these days the military and literary worlds barely overlap.
“These are … Read more...