(The Conversation) — While Halloween has its origins in Christian tradition, Day of the Dead is a mix of a thriving indigenous culture and the religion of its 16th-century conquerers.

(The Conversation) — Evidence suggests that cannabis prohibition over the past 50 years has disproportionately punished France’s Muslim minority.

(USA Today Network) — The race to colonize Mars is underway, but one astronomy professor thinks we should slow down and figure out if there is life on Earth's planetary neighbor before our exploration destroys it.

(RNS) Some of Junipero Serra’s sharpest critics say he was part of an imperial conquest that beat and enslaved Native Americans, raped their women, and destroyed their culture.

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) A call for greater acceptance of gays and lesbians has put African and Western churches on a collision course, as some African clerics liken mounting criticism from the U.S. and Europe to a new wave of colonization by the West.

What is perhaps most frustrating about the NY Times' "mental deficiency" language vis-a-vis Muslims and democracy is that this language is simply a continuation of a colonial apologia where Western countries colonizing and occupying, Muslim (and other) countries justified their lingering oppression by stating that these countries “were not ready to rule themselves”, “lacked the mental qualifications needed for self-governance”, etc. This colonial—which is to say, unjust and oppressive—worldview must be exposed and dismantled before we can embrace a more holistic and humanistic paradigm.

Reggae is at its most revolutionary force when it is prophetic, emancipatory, raw, justice-oriented, anti-colonial, imbued with love and life-affirming. And very much like Hip-Hop in this case, what a tragedy to see such powerful prophetic medium commercialized to enable awful, awful drunken dancing. Happy Redemption, O Holy Bob.