by Sash Suicide

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by Fred Topel

Julian Schnabel has never made easy films. Basquiat was a biography of the street artist who became a protege of Andy Warhol. Before Night Falls portrayed exiled gay author Reinaldo Arenas. And The Diving Bell and the Butterfly told the story of author Jean-Dominique Bauby – all from the point of view of the one eye from which he could see after a paralyzing stroke.

Miral is a story set in the midst of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, told through the eyes of a Palestinian girl. Miral (Freida Pinto) grows up in a Palestinian orphanage, where her teacher, Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass), encourages her to stay out of politics. But young activists in the PLO like Hani (Omar Metwally) are powerful examples to Miral, and she wants to get involved.

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by Blogbot

In an unlikely alliance, the undead joined forces with the living on the streets of Wisconsin this past Saturday to rise against GOP Governor Scott Walker and his grotesquely unfair anti-union policies.

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by Alana Joy

The CEO of GoDaddy, Bob Parsons, has posted a video of his vacation in Zimbabwe online. Normally not something that would cause controversy, it’s the slaughter of an innocent elephant being glorified that has the internet in an uproar. The video opens with “For the second year in a row, I spent ten days hunting problem elephant in Zimbabwe.”

The video below contains scenes of graphic violence against animals. Viewer discretion is advised.

Parsons, accompanied by local tour guides, shows where crops have been trampled by these “problem elephant” on his self-proclaimed “humanitarian” expedition. “Many die each year from starvation and one of the problems they have is the elephants, of which there are thousands and thousands, that trash many of their fields destroying the crops. Of everything I do this is the most rewarding. This video shows one typical night and day.” This is how he rationalizes what comes next…

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by Sash Suicide

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by Aaron Colter

The first time I saw Che Smith was in the basement of the Purdue Student Union in West Lafayette, Indiana. The Malcontents, a local ska band, were playing a free show in the student center on what was hopefully a weekend night, given the amount of substances I consumed. That evening, while The Malcontents were jamming out a reggae-vibe number called “We Make Profits,” and I was three-quarters into a bottle of Captain Morgan, someone started free-styling over the song – Rhymefest.

Despite starting the night in the basement of a Purdue building and waking up some sixty miles away at Butler University, I remember that song. It was, and remains, one of the single greatest live music moments in my life. But the reason I’m writing about Rhymefest, or rather Che Smith, isn’t because of his music, it’s because Che Smith is running for Alderman of Chicago’s 20th Ward.

Most of the media has defined Che Smith as a childhood friend of Kayne West, a Grammy-winner for “Jesus Walks With Me,” and the winner of a hip-hop battle with Eminem. All of these things are true, but that’s not the entire story.

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by Keith Daniels

The Bible is often presented by believers as a monolithic creation, as if it descended from Heaven whole, perfect, and in King James’ English. The truth, as in so many things, is so much more complicated and interesting. The text of the Hebrew Tanakh which became what Christians dismissively call the “Old Testament” began as an oral tradition that was eventually written down in Hebrew and Aramaic by unknown scribes over hundreds of years in what’s called “abjad” script – a system of writing in which only the consonants are set down and the reader is intended to fill in the vowels. These individual writings were eventually collected into a generally accepted canon by around 400 BCE and finally codified at a later but unknown date, probably by 100 CE.

And that’s just the “Old Testament”.

Similarly, the New Testament is a disparate collection of texts from numerous and mostly unknown authors – despite traditional ascriptions – writing from between around 50 to 200 CE. None of the books of the New Testament were written during the lifetime of a historical Jesus. And according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the popular conception of one singular ancient council of the Church that decided what books were in and what were out is inaccurate:

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