In the past week, thousands of protestors have taken to the street in New York City in a movement named by the hashtag “#OCCUPYWALLSTEET.” Dozens of arrests as well as photographs, videos, and tweets by protestors depicting aggressive police actions have turned the attention of the country towards Wall Street. Some, such as Ginia Bellafante of … Read more
In October of last year, Paul Schied published a well-intentioned critique of the gay rights movement with the hope of providing useful strategic advise to the proponents of gay equality. As the title of the piece clearly indicates, he is concerned with the tenor of the campaign for gay equality and suggests the movement needs … Read more
The start of school has been met by a great deal of buzz surrounding the Freshman Values Pledge. Just this past week, the story was picked up by a Wall Street Journal blog. Proponents of the pledge laud it for re-committing students to a core set of beliefs that are sometimes overlooked at college—a place … Read more
A Case Against the Modern American Presidency When Obama clinched the Democratic nomination, in June of 2008, The New York Times published an unusually good political profile of the man and his moment. Instead of simply profiling Obama’s life, the essay’s author profiled Obama’s opinion … Read more
On August 6th, while the banking district was serving up £35,000 in cocktails, comfortably paid for by bailout money (the banks still owe UK taxpayers £456.33bn), frustrated and aimless crowds took to the streets, including many of the nearly one half of London’s children living in poverty. The world’s surprise was great when this superrich city … Read more
A constant refrain from critics in the United States is that Pakistan has not been using all of its aid effectively. US aid to Pakistan totaled nearly 4.5 billion dollars in the fiscal year 2010, but 800 million dollars of security assistance was frozen in August in response to Pakistan’s refusal to admit American military … Read more
A post in our ongoing series from haywirehiphop.com Music is inherently designed to surprise us, to acknowledge our existing expectations and then surpass them, thus guiding us as listeners toward the next song and making us yearn for further advancement of the musical product at hand. Think about that for a second: music would be … Read more
For the minority of Israelis and Americans who oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, this week’s historic UN showdown is unlikely to be the disappointment it’s been made out to be. Luckily for them, nobody imagines that UN recognition will amount to actual Palestinian sovereignty any time soon. Barring a violent paradigm shift, Israeli … Read more
On 17th December 2010, Tunisian police seized Muhammad Buazizi’s vegetable cart. The jobless graduate set himself on fire, dying from wounds and sparking protests around Tunisia. Less than a month later, a man sets fire to himself in Egypt. The Arab Awakening also called the ‘Arab Spring’ was the turning point for governance and policy … Read more
On 17th December 2010, Tunisian police seized Muhammad Buazizi’s vegetable cart. The jobless graduate set himself on fire, dying from wounds and sparking protests around Tunisia. Less than a month later, a man sets fire to himself in Egypt. The Arab Awakening also called the ‘Arab Spring’ was the turning point for governance and policy … Read more