Culture and Society

“It’s behind us,” Fernando Gonzales of the Cuban Five said with a smile when I told him just a few moments ago that I was sorry for the U.S. government having locked him in a cage for 15 years. It was nice of the New York Times to editorialize in favor of negotiations to release the remaining three, he said, especially since that paper had never reported on the story at all.

Gonzales said there is no ground for the United States keeping Cuba on its terrorist list. That there are read more

We arrived in Havana tonight, February 8, 2015, or year 56 of the revolution, 150 of us filling an entire airplane, a group of U.S. peace and justice activists organized by CODEPINK. The place is hot and beautiful despite the rain.

The buildings, the cars, the sidewalks look as if time stopped in 1959. The tour guide on the bus from the airport to the hotel brags that the municipality around the airport has a psychiatric hospital and a spaghetti factory. Both the billboards and the tour guide fit read more

Whether someone becomes addicted to drugs has much more to do with their childhood and their quality of life than with the drug they use or with anything in their genes. This is one of the more startling of the many revelations in the best book I’ve read yet this year: Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari.

We’ve all been handed a myth. The myth goes like this: Certain drugs are so powerful that if you use them enough they will take over. They read more

Guantanamera! Guajira!

Guantanamera!

Guantanamera! Guajira!

Guantanamera!

We’re gonna close down the prison

And give you back your tierra

We’re gonna close down the prison

And give you back your tierra

No more men kept in cages

Howling at your sierra

Guantanamera! Guajira!

Guantanamera!

Guantanamera! Guajira!

Guantanamera!

We’re gonna lift the embargo

And pay full compensation

We’re gonna lift the embargo

And pay full compensation

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Lee Camp in Cville

Popular comic Lee Camp is coming to town.

WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday, February 21

WHERE: Main Street Annex at 219 Water Street, Charlottesville, VA

BUY TICKETS: $10 in advance, $12 at the door, buy tickets now.

Show is for 18 and up only.

LEE CAMP‘s stand-up comedy has been featured on Comedy Central, ABC’s Good Morning America, Showtime’s The Green Room with Paul Provenza, Al-Jazeera America’s election night read more

What the U.S. government does openly is many times worse than anything it can be doing secretly, and yet the secrets fascinate us.

If you compare polling on majority views on most political topics with actual U.S. policy, there’s little overlap. Scholars now produce reports finding that the United States is an oligarchy. Most people don’t vote. Those who try to engage with U.S. politics get excited when the read more

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There’s little dispute among social scientists that most of our major public programs are counter-productive on their own terms. There is also little analysis of this phenomenon as a pattern in need of an explanation and a solution.

Prisons are supposedly intended to reduce crime, but instead increase it. Young people who when they commit crimes are arrested and punished become much more likely to commit crimes as adults than are those young people who when they commit crimes are just left read more

It’s hard to know whether to be pleased each time the place I live, Charlottesville, Va., is named the happiest city in the United States. I grew up largely in Northern Virginia (suburbs of Washington, D.C.) and Charlottesville is a long ways away in Central Virginia.  I remember hearing that Fairfax County schools, which I attended at the time, were ranked best in the country.  Wow, I thought, other people’s schools must be truly awful!

So, I haven’t discovered that read more