– Mark Anderson writes for the Ward Room.

Every once in a while, a race comes along where two or more different candidates couldn’t be any less alike. In fact, one is shaping up here right in Chicago in the 2015 mayoral race between potential candidates Karen Lewis, Bob Fioretti and Rahm Emanuel.

That doesn’t stop stories being written in the media that suggests these candidates are really almost one and the same. Or that one or the other says they’re different, but really isn’t telling the truth.

To be clear, let’s stake out who we’re talking about. On the one hand we have our current mayor, who, while positioning himself as a liberal Democrat, has in fact enacted policies that benefit corporations and campaign donors, slashed social services and public education, starve neighborhoods of resources, diminish public service pensions, spy on political enemies and more.

There’s a reason why…

This.

In some corners of the rape denial universe it is popular to say that this doesn’t happen, that all reports of drugged drinks are merely voluntary overconsumption.  There are two kinds of people who say that: (1) those who have chosen to believe it, because they don’t believe anything women say anyway and because it’s convenient for them to believe it; and (2) those who know first-hand that it isn’t true, but want to protect those who deliberately and involuntarily intoxicate others.

When people say, “rape culture,” some people say that there isn’t one.  Even some people who should know better say that. Everyone agrees that rape is bad, right?  But they don’t.  In the comments and threats that assail women who speak out about rape on the internet, when the trolls know people are unlikely to uncover their identities, they say what they really think.  They approve of…

Faisal Al Fouzan is a Kuwaiti photographer. He considers the camera as an extension of himself and spends a lot of time collecting visual stories in and around Kuwait. He is the recipient of the 2014 Arab Documentary Photography Programme (ADPP) Grant by Magnum Foundation.

Non-Citizens of Kuwait is Fouzan’s series of street portraits of the low income laborers working and living in Kuwait.

There are two groups of non-citizens in Kuwait. The first one is migrant workers. According to Human Rights Watch (2012 report), migrant workers in Kuwait comprise eighty percent of the country’s workforce, but continue to face exploitation and abuse under the sponsorship system.

The second one is Bidun. At least 106,000 stateless persons, known as Bidun, live in Kuwait. After an initial registration period for citizenship ended in 1960, authorities shifted Bidun citizenship applications to a series of administrative committees that have avoided resolving…

In my morning prayer time, I have tried to say a bunch of things to the Creator to make me feel better. To put a band aid on my fears or things in my life I wasn’t ready to deal with. I know my connection is more true and I find more peace when I lose my self centeredness,  “speech voice” and just ramble on.

I believe we are all connected to the Creator and I don’t know if I believe that that connectedness can really ever be broken. I think what can be broken is our consciousness of connectedness. That we don’t live and breathe as if the Creator is inside of us. For me it works best when I begin my day off acknowledging that I am eternally connected.

Most peoples of the land begin their day like this. Like my friend Walt Wilkins once wrote “I’ve tried my best to…

Burnaby-Douglas MP Kennedy Stewart wants to hear from other pipeline opponents who feel targeted

By Natalie Clancy, CBC News, Sept 18, 2014

A 71-year-old B.C. grandmother was shocked to learn her recent research for an upcoming National Energy Board hearing triggered a national security investigation.

Lesslie Askin says that on Aug. 3, she photographed Kinder Morgan’s aging storage tanks at the base of Burnaby Mountain.

Ten days later, she learned she was a terror suspect.

Less than one month after killing more than 2,100 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 500 children, Israel is hosting its annual drone conference.

Organized in partnership with the US embassy in Tel Aviv, “Israel Unmanned Systems 2014” offers Israeli military firms an opportunity to flaunt the performance of their products, many of which were tested on Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip this summer.

Palestine has long served as a laboratory for Israel’s ballooning “homeland security” industry to test and perfect weapons of domination and control, with disenfranchised and stateless Palestinians serving as their lab rats.

Speaking to the German magazine Der Spiegel last month, Avner Benzaken, head of the Israeli army’s “technology and logistics” division — a unit “comprised largely of academics who also happen to be officers” — explained the benefits of this occupation.

“If I develop a product and want to test it in the…