Jan 12, 2015 | mic, Religion and Religious Issues, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: Daily Dot (January 12, 2015) Even before the events in Paris this week, many Americans already harbored prejudicial attitudes toward Muslims, and not surprisingly, there has been a flurry of Islamophobia in the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, but it’s all part of a long history of treating and fearing Muslims as the Other. The true enemy, though, is not a single...
Jan 1, 2015 | Arts and Entertainment, Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, World Affairs
Published: Daily Dot (January 1, 2015) Regardless of whether North Korea was actually responsible for hacking Sony, America can learn an interesting lessons from the brouhaha surrounding the release of The Interview. As a result of this incident, we have learned that the Internet—which was used by the Guardians of Peace in an attempt to intimidate other people—can also stoke the flames of public...
Dec 23, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, mic, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: Good Men Project (December 23, 2014) Matthew Rozsa offers three suggestions to protect both the police and the communities that fear them and calls for both groups to demand that politicians enact them. ___ Believe it or not, Michael Brown and Eric Garner share one very important quality with the pair of NYPD officers who were brutally slain earlier this week: Both of them live in a...
Dec 22, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, mic, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: Daily Dot (December 22, 2014) Say what you will about The Interview, but let’s abandon the notion that the filmmakers were wrong for their fictionalized depiction of Kim Jong-un’s death. The reason is simple: It is healthy to assert that Kim Jong-un deserves to die. Kim Jong-un is not just some interchangeable foreign leader. This is a point critics, like Justin Moyer of the...
Dec 19, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, mic, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: Good Men Project (December 19, 2014) Matthew Rozsa is mad as hell that Sony pulled ‘The Interview.’ But he’s equally horrified by the company’s racist attitudes. ___ If North Korea has shown the world anything, it is that the executives at Sony are abject cowards. This may sound rough, but it needs to be said. And since I’ve already expounded at length upon the free speech issue...
Dec 18, 2014 | Arts and Entertainment, Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, mic, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: Good Men Project (December 18, 2014) Matthew Rozsa believes North Korea’s threat to Sony challenges the very essence of our democratic freedoms. ___ Is it too much to expect Americans who expect to profit from the First Amendment to stand up for its underlying ethos? Of course, due emphasis must be placed on the phrase “underlying ethos” in the aforementioned sentence. Although the...
Oct 9, 2014 | Extremism, mic, Original Source Salon.com, Political Ideologies, Religion and Religious Issues, World Affairs
Feb 24, 2014 | Foreign Policy, History, mic, Military-Industrial Complex/Security State, Millennials, Other Media, World Affairs
Published: mic (February 24, 2014), Appearance on Channel 69 - WFMZ (February 25, 2014) The news: Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel plans to announce billions of dollars in military spending cuts, reducing our armed forces to troop levels unseen since 1940— before America entered World War II. In addition to reducing the size of our standing army, he will also propose limiting pay raises,...
Jan 11, 2014 | Foreign Policy, History, mic, World Affairs
Published: mic (January 11, 2014) "I am 73 years old. I've seen everything. I've met the kings, the queens, the presidents, I've been around the world. I have one thing that I would like to do: to try to reach peace." When Ariel Sharon uttered these words in the first year of his tenure as prime minister of Israel, observers of Middle Eastern politics were understandably skeptical of their...
Dec 9, 2013 | Conservativism, Foreign Policy, History, mic, Political Ideologies, Race and Racism, Terrorism, World Affairs
Published: mic (December 9, 2013) Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, and other paladins of the American right labeled Nelson Mandela a terrorist. While mainstream conservatives tend to renounce this characterization today, it still has currency in more ideologically zealous circles. Indeed, some people on Twitter are already tweeting away reiterations of the infamous "terrorist"...