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Pope Francis Brokers End to Cuba Embargo, Despite Opposition of Catholic Pols

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…ile, I think, an island-colony. We can reach it by a thirty-minute charter flight from Miami, yet never reach it at all.” Today, Cuba is more in our reach. As a Cuban-American from Miami I have been raised amidst the existential crisis of the Cuban exile community, a community with a rabid anger towards the Castro regime and simultaneous love and compassion for their fellow Cubans on the island. I, like many children of exiles, was raised holding…

That Mercenary Feeling: What the Apparently Unlimited Use of “Contractors” Says About American Empire in Afghanistan and Iraq

By Peter Laarman

…In it Jim Glanz points out that Pentagon-employed contractors not only outnumber uniformed U.S. troops in Afghanistan but also that the ratio of contractors to military personnel there is the highest of any war in U.S. history. In a new study, the Congressional Research Service reports that contractors make up 65% of the Pentagon’s overall forces in Afghanistan over the past two years. And this is just for the Pentagon: the new CRS report does no…

Religious Resistance to Bolivian Gender Law; US Religious Right Celebrates Court OK For Romanian Marriage Initiative; Will LGBTs Be Banned from Indonesian TV?; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…$119.1 billion annually. Hannah Harris Green reports on the ongoing legal flight of LGBT refugees, taking note of a recent decision by the U.S. Appeals Court for the Ninth Circuit that an immigration judge had erred in refusing to acknowledge an asylum seeker’s transgender identity. The article touches on those seeking asylum in Canada, Australia, and Europe. An excerpt: This decision means that transgender immigrants who fight their cases in the…

Theocracy: “What Would Be So Bad About It?”

By Julie Ingersoll

…was made out to be and explains his theodicy as a response to his family’s flight from the Armenian genocide in Turkey. His whole life project was to try to figure out what could protect you. In the end, he came down to the only thing that is solid is God’s law. Well, you say the word law in the 20th or 21st century, and people break out in a rash. I’m not sure why she used the word theodicy — which is an attempt to answer the theological problem…

Capricology: Divine Madness

By Salman Hameed

…s the ability to instantly acquire the skills she needs to get through the flight simulator. She argues in effect that she doesn’t want to do things the easy way; she wants to earn her way through the virtual world. I am reminded of the ongoing debates around multiplayer games about what constitutes cheating and whether it is appropriate for a character to pay real cash to buy a ready-made avatar which can function at higher levels than they have…

Blame Series Bonus: How Federal Policy Created America’s Fergusons

By Andrew Aghapour

…Justice Department has made for Ferguson and which it has also made for a number of other cities around the country, are important. But the problems they’re addressing are a symptom. It’s not to say the symptom shouldn’t be treated, but the underlying cause of these problems is the fact that we’ve segregated housing throughout metropolitan areas in the country for the last century. And unless we are as aggressive in desegregating neighborhoods as…

Useless and Useful: A True Sage Reviews The Tao of Happiness

By Alan Levinovitz

…is about one animal metamorphosing into another animal. Lin titles it “The Flight of the Peng Bird.” This is his version: In the Northern Sea, there is a giant fish. Its name is Kun. Its size is incredibly large. No one knows how many thousands of miles its length measures. The Kun fish is able to transform into a bird, known as Peng. The Peng bird is also incredibly large. No one knows how many thousands of miles its wingspan measures. Peng chang…

“Tell Me What You Believe About Ferguson, and I’ll Tell You What You Believe About God”: A Missouri Pilgrimage

By Anita Little

…, a suburb of St. Louis that represents the outer edge of the city’s white flight, I took stock of the 30-odd people surrounding me. An interesting mix, some of the attendees were longtime activists of color, some seemed to be defectors from the traditional black church, some were white Christian millennials eager to dive into social movements and a few were older white congregants starting to recognize the meaning of privilege for the first time….

RD10Q: What is Black Religion?

By William D. Hart

…powers that be. Finally, an Afro-Eccentric perspective provides a line of flight from the totalitarian blackness that often characterizes Afrocentric perspectives. Anything you had to leave out? A reader of the book in manuscript form suggested that I shorten the text by removing a substantial amount of material that dealt with scholarly/theoretical deviations from the Standard Narrative of Black Religion. I plan to publish that material separate…

The Faith that Faith Produced

By Haroon Moghul

Introduction: That Muslim Was an Atheist I was on a flight to Los Angeles many years ago, and after a few hours of nobly but futilely fighting the boredom, I ventured a conversation with the middle-aged man fate and ticketing had seated next to me. We started chatting because we were listless, but soon found a common interest. It turned out that my fellow passenger was a diehard L.A. Lakers fan. Unlike me, he was a successful dentist who lived…