Editorials & Actions

The Greatest Show on Earth How Billions of Words, Tweets, Insults, and Polls Blot Out Reality in Campaign 2016

By Rabbi Michael Lerner | August 9, 2016

In the last year, untold billions of words have been expended on this “election” and the outsized histories, flaws, and baggage the two personalities now running for president bring with them. Has there ever been this sort of coverage — close to a year of it already — hour after hour, day after day, night after night? Has the New York Times ever featured stories about the same candidate and his cronies, two at a time, on its front page daily the way it’s recently been highlighting the antics of The Donald? Have there ever been so many “experts” of every stripe jawing away about a single subject on cable TV from the crack of dawn to the witching hour?

Editorials & Actions

Adolph Reed on Bernie Sanders and the New Class Politics

By Rabbi Michael Lerner | August 9, 2016

An interview with African American scholar Adolph Reed on Bernie  Sander’s Campaign and the New Class Politics 
Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination was historic. The expectations were, to say the least, modest. One year ago, ex-Obama chief strategist David Axelrod didn’t hesitate to mock his candidacy saying that “people will have a fling with Bernie. Bernie is like a great fun date because you know he’s not going to be around town too long, and I think you’re going to see people flirt with that.”

But, against all odds, within months Sanders would raise over $200 million in small contributions, and win more than thirteen million votes (43 percent of the total) and twenty-three states. Though he fell short of the nomination, Sanders left an impact on a generation of new voters and the political discourse in the country. What exactly that will mean for the Left and the country’s labor movement remains to be seen.

Editorials & Actions

Patriotic Muslim Dad Hails Dead Son’s Participation in U.S. Crime Against Humanity in Muslim Iraq

By Rabbi Michael Lerner | August 6, 2016

Patriotic Muslim Dad Hails Dead Son’s Participation in US Crime Against Humanity in Muslim Iraq
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When she was Senator, Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton voted for the US invasion of Iraq, an obvious international crime against humanity that would take the lives of a million and half innocent Muslims, probably half of them children. Last week her nominating Democratic Convention, featured a Muslim father, whose son was killed participating in US crime against Muslim people ranting about what a bad guy her opponent Donald Trump is and praising himself and his son as patriotic, though Trump had spoken out against the illegal and criminal invasion of Iraq.Here below, are the very terse, concise, precise, unequivocal, brief to the point, clear and easy to understand Nuremberg Principles of International Law, mostly written by Americans, signed on to by all nations and first used to hang a number of Nazi leaders of a Germany, that invaded only some twenty nations – US since has invaded perhaps more than as twice that number.[1] (Few Americans are interested in this comparison)Principle IAny person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.Principle IIThe fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.Principle IIIThe fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.Principle IVThe fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.Principle VAny person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.Principle VIThe crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:(a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).(b) War crimes:Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.(c) Crimes against humanity:Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connectionwith any crime against peace or any war crime.Principle VIIComplicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime againsthumanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.(Your author’s mentor and dear friend, Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark has stated that by Article Six of the US Constitution, the Nuremberg Principles of International Law are an integral part of the law of the land.)Later in the week, the monolithic wars justifying US media, for decades force fed and controlled by the CIA,[2] brought out information that seemed to indicate Donald Trump’s unwillingness to participate in a previous US genocidal crime against humanity to prevent Vietnam from having the communist government it has today and has had since Americans got tired of killing and being killed in what was French Indochina colonies before World War Two.Do readers recall what America’s beloved heroic champion Muhammad Ali said about his refusal to be drafted during the US war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia?”Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars.

Editorials & Actions

The Danger of Excessive Trump Bashing by Robert Parry

By Rabbi Michael Lerner | August 5, 2016

Editor’s note: As a 501-c-3 we do not endorse or oppose any candidate for office or any political party. We do try to present views that are not normally heard in the mainstream media, but we often present ideas with which we disagree if they present perspectives that challenge our thinking or what we perceive to be the dominant thinking in the liberal and progressive world. We have long believed that liberals and progressives emerge stronger when we are forced to grapple with such alternative perspectives.–Rabbi Michael Lerner

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The Danger of Excessive Trump Bashing

August 4, 2016

Exclusive: The prospect of Donald Trump in the White House alarms many people but bashing him over his contrarian views on NATO and U.S.-Russian relations could set the stage for disasters under President Hillary Clinton, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry

The widespread disdain for Donald Trump and the fear of what his presidency might mean have led to an abandonment of any sense of objectivity by many Trump opponents and, most notably, the “mainstream” U.S. news media. If Trump is for something, it must be bad and must be transformed into one more club to use for hobbling his candidacy.

Editorials & Actions

“Trumped” by David Swanson

By Rabbi Michael Lerner | August 3, 2016

Trumped
Written by davidswanson

Why would it be that 8 years ago you couldn’t win a Democratic presidential primary if you’d voted for a war on Iraq after pushing all the Bush White House lies about it, and yet now you can? Back then the war looked closer to ending, the death count was lower, and ISIS was only in the planning stages. Reports on the fraud, criminality, and knowingly self-destructive nature of the war launch — reports like the Chilcot report — hadn’t yet been produced. How can you drag this albatross across the finish line at this late date in 2016? Well, you can’t, in fact.

Editorials & Actions

Jeff St. Clair’s impressionistic account of the Democratic Convnetion

By Rabbi Michael Lerner | July 30, 2016

Editor’s Note: Now don’t go jumping to the conclusion that I agree with Jeff St. Clair’s perspective just because I’ve posted it here. As I repeatedly say, we want a variety of perspectives on the elections on our website, and welcome yours if it’s original, lively, says something most of our readers will not have likely heard in the mainstream media, and is smart. That is not the same thing as true or accurate Asi turns out, he has written columns in which he denounces me personally as an apologist for Zionism (I wish he’d send those charges to the American Jewish leaders who repeatedly attack me for being an anti-Israel self-hating Jew!) So you have to judge for yourself if his perceptions match yours on what was happening at the convention. But we thought there were some points here worth considering, though that doesn’t mean we agree with them.

Editorials & Actions

Lerner’s Huffington Post article on Sanders Supporters’ Dilemma

By Rabbi Michael Lerner | July 28, 2016

THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

Senator Bernie Sanders had two good reasons for endorsing Hillary: 1. His firm belief that the country would be considerably worse off were Donald Trump to win the presidency; 2. If his movement to push the Democratic Party in a progressive direction would had been perceived as having failed to support Hillary Clinton, it would have been blamed if Hillary were to lose in November. If that happened, it would have given progressives the kind of bad reputation consumer advocate Ralph Nader got when he failed to tell his supporters in the 2000 presidential election to not vote for him but vote for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in those few states where the polls indicated that the outcome might well depend on Gore getting the Nader voters. The burden of that would have crippled his movement for many years to come.

Editorials & Actions

Michael Moore: Why Trump Will Win

By Rabbi Michael Lerner | July 25, 2016

Editor’s Note: Tikkun  magazine doesn’t endorse any candidate or political party–we are barred from doing so as a non-profit. But we can print articles from our readers and other sources that provide their analyses and their views on the candidates and parties. Michael Moore’s analysis of the election is worthy of serious attention. As we say repeatedly, out choice of articles to print, put on our website and in our Tikkun Daily Blog do not necessarily reflect our own views–which are expressed only in our editorials in the print magazine–but rather reflect our desire to encourage public debate about important ideas (so, yes, we would welcome publication of very different views from those expressed by Moore or anyone else who seems to be backing or critiquing political candidates or political parties–see for example in our Tikkun Daily Blog an article about the Libertarian candidate, and we’ll be doing an interview with Jill Stein and we’ve requested interviews with Trump and Clinton and Sanders). In our Fall 2016 issue of Tikkun magazine we present our analysis of the reasons why many Americans are attracted to rightwing extremist movements and why they are likely to play an important role in American politics no matter who wins the 2016 presidential election.

Editorials & Actions

The Libertarian Candidate

By Rabbi Michael Lerner | July 23, 2016

Editor’s Note: Tikkun Magazine does not endorse any candidate for public office or any political party. But we do encourage our readers to send us their thoughts about the various candidates if they have something new to say that has not already been said in one of the articles on our website or in Tikkun Daily blog. We’ve had nothing about The Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, so when a reader sent us this information we wanted to put it up so you’d know about this candidate as well as the ones more fully covered in the lamestream media.–Rabbi Michael Lerner

On January 6, 2016, Johnson declared that he would seek the Libertarian nomination for the presidency.[5] On May 18, Johnson named former Massachusetts Governor William Weld as his running mate.[108]
On May 29, 2016, Johnson received the Libertarian nomination on the second ballot.[6]
Political positions[edit]
Main article: Political positions of Gary Johnson
Johnson’s views have been described as fiscally conservative and socially liberal[109] with a philosophy of limited government[110] and military non-interventionism.[111][112] He has identified as a classical liberal.[113] Johnson has said he favors simplifying and reducing taxes.[114] During his governorship, Johnson cut taxes fourteen times and never increased them.[115] Due to his stance on taxes, political pundit David Weigel described him as “the original Tea Party candidate.”[116] Johnson has advocated for the FairTax, a proposal which would abolish all federal income, corporate and capital gains taxes, and replace them with a 23% tax on consumption of all non-essential goods, while providing a regressive rebate to households according to income level. He has argued that this would assure transparency in the tax system and incentivize the private sector to create “tens of millions of jobs.”[117] In June 2016, Johnson said that he supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership.[118]
Johnson has said that he supports balancing the federal budget immediately.[119] He has stated he supports “slashing government spending”, includingMedicare, Medicaid, and Social Security,[114] which would involve cutting Medicare and Medicaid by 43 percent and turning them into block grant programs, with control of spending in the hands of the states to create, in his words, “fifty laboratories of innovation.”[119] He has advocated passing a law allowing forstate bankruptcy and expressly ruling out a federal bailout of any states.[110] Johnson has expressed opposition to the Federal Reserve System, which he has cited as massively devaluing the strength of the U.S. dollar, and would sign legislation to eliminate it. He has also supported an audit of the central bank, and urged Members of Congress in July 2012 to vote in favor of Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve Transparency Act.[120]
In his campaign for the Libertarian Party nomination, he stated he opposed foreign wars and pledged to cut the military budget by 43 percent in his first term as president.[112] He would cut the military’s overseas bases, uniformed and civilian personnel, research and development, intelligence, and nuclear weapons programs.[121][122] He has stated his opposition to US involvement in the War in Afghanistan and opposed the US involvement in the Libyan Civil War.[123] He has stated that he does not believe Iran is a military threat, would use his presidential power to prevent Israel from attacking Iran, and would not follow Israel, or any other ally, into a war that it had initiated.[124]
Johnson is a strong supporter of civil liberties and received the highest score of any candidate from the American Civil Liberties Union for supporting drug decriminalization while opposing censorship and regulation of the Internet, the Patriot Act, enhanced airport screenings, and the indefinite detention of prisoners.[125] He has spoken in favor of the separation of church and state, and has said that he does not “seek the counsel of God” when determining his political agenda.[126] Johnson endorsed same-sex marriage in 2011;[127] he has since called for a constitutional amendment protecting equal marriage rights,[127] and criticized Obama’s position on the issue as having “thrown this question back to the states.”[128] On the other hand, Johnson opposes Roe v. Wade, believing states should decide the matter.