Music Is My Ammunition

Playing for Change video of Bob Marley's classic of hope and forgiveness, featuring Mermans Kenkosenki, Roberto Luti, as well as family members from Cuba and Jamaica including Stephen Marley.

Documentary: India's Daughter

India’s Daughter is the powerful story of the brutal gang rape on a Delhi bus of a 23 year old medical student. Udwin got exclusive, first time on camera interviews with the rapists and defense attorney, none of whom express remorse. Read a review. Now in theaters.

Medea Benjamin on System Change

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK, discusses her personal journey; how corporate and militarist forces keep the U.S. in a state of perpetual war; and how social movements can develop a genuine alternative. 

Could We Actually Live on Mars?

There's a lot of talk these days about when and how we might all move to Mars. But what would it actually be like to live there? 

Minimum Wage 2016: Here It Comes

Lydia DePillis The Washington Post
Labor unions are working to build tools at scale to support the spate of ballot initiatives voters will face next year.

Inoculating Against Science Denial

John Cook The Conversation
Ironically, throwing more science at science denial ignores the social science research into denial. You can’t adequately address science denial without considering the root cause: the ideology driving the rejection. The way to inoculate people against anti-scientific myths is to explain the fallacy employed by the myth. Once people understand the techniques used to distort the science, they can reconcile the myth with the fact.

Where to look

Jane Spiro Playing for Time
The UK poet Jane Spiro, a seasoned traveler and keen observer, reminds us that pleasure, wisdom and all good things depend on knowing "where to look."

Vera B. Williams, 88, Dies; Brought Working Class to Children's Books

Margalit Fox The New York Times
Vera B. Williams the award-winning writer, illustrator, children's book author and social justice activist, died last Friday. Her best-known picture book, A Chair for My Mother, was named as a Caldecott Honor Book. Long active in antiwar, antinuclear and environmental causes, Ms. Williams was a past member of the executive committee of the War Resisters League.

Are the U.S. and Russia Forming 5 New States in the Middle-East?

Keith K C Hui Foreign Policy in Focus
The Middle-East map is being redrawn in Syria and Iraq by Moscow and Washington. The Obama Administration is co-leading with the Kremlin to help slice the Syria-Iraq area into five or more political states so as to deconflict this region and hopefully reduce the attractiveness of ISIL.