Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/global_capitalism/page/7/)
ECONOMY & WORK
The Sanders “Economic Plan” Controversy
Economist Gerald Friedman did an analysis of Senator Bernie Sanders’s plan suggesting it would produce significant growth in the economy — and then a group of left-leaning economists flipped out. BY DAVE JOHNSON | FEBRUARY 23, 2016
The Sanders “Economic Plan” […]
A trader monitors offers in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index options pit at the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) on August 24, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois.
IMMIGRANTS AND MENACES –a report on European responses to the flood of immigrants
by Victor Grossman – Berlin
Like the rising sea level endangering the Maledives, Marshalls and other islands, the immigrant question is changing political geography in Germany. But it is not the refugees who are posing the threat, despite their number; it is instead those forces, never eliminated, whose goals and methods all too vividly recall events here 85 years ago. (May I make a US comparison: It’s not the Syrians but Trump or Cruz?)
An estimated one million will have arrived in Germany by the end of the year. The government is sending back those from Africa, Eastern Europe and other areas, no matter what the consequences in many cases. Those from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq are generally accepted; it is ironic that the cause of chaos, desperation and flight in those three countries was military interference by the western powers and their hugely well-armed allies from Riadh, the Gulf Coast or Ankara. Hardly anyone outside the small left-wing press even mentions this basic matter.
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We at Tikkun’s Network of Spiritual Progressives are part of the Citizens Trade Campaign coalition of forces that have challenged the Clinton Administration and now the Obama Administration in their proclivity to create trade policies that are destructive to the environment and to the well being of working people here and around the world. The latest such is the Trans-Pacific Partnership which, while having some positive aspects, would restrict countries from passing important environmental and health care related legislation that might interfere with corporate profits. This latest effort to give multinational corporations powers that supersede the powers of national governments is one more reason we need the ESRA–Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The ESRA would, among many other important measures, overturn any such international agreement that has been approved by the U.S. government or will be approved in the future–please help us get it endorsed after you read it at www.tikkun.org/esra.
Rabbi Michael Lerner issued the following response about the newly released full version of the TPP:
The TPP agreement violates a basic command of the Bible: that human beings must protect and act as stewards for the earth. Instead, it provides a path for corporations to overturn the most moderate environmental restraints on corporate avarice, much less the far more stringent actions that environmentalists tell us are needed to even begin to reverse climate change and preserve the earth for future generations.
Flawed System/Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences
by Ofer Sharone
Review by Amy Mazur
The meaning of the virgin birth got lost in translation: it wasn’t meant to vilify female sexuality but to echo a prophetic challenge to oppression.
Beyond the Sustainable Development Goals: uncovering the truth about global poverty and demanding the universal realization of Article 25 and the adoption of a Global Marshall Plan www.tikkun.org/gmp
[Note from Tikkun: The report below from Share the World’s Resources, http://www.sharing.org/ shows that “The Sustainable Development Goals” promoted by the United Nations and by many countries around the world – despite their positive and progressive rhetoric – by no means constitute a transformative agenda for meeting the basic needs of all people within the means of our shared planet. Reading this report in all its details will give you a full understanding of how serious the global crisis of poverty (including in the U.S.) really is and why it must be confronted now. And as we have argued in Tikkun magazine, without dealing with poverty there is no way to solve the global environmental crisis, because people’s desperation to feed their families and provide shelter and health care force many around the globe to engage in environmentally destructive behaviors which can’t be stopped without dealing immediately with their survival needs. This report argues that we may never see an end to poverty “in all its forms everywhere” unless ordinary people unite in their millions and demand the universal realisation of fundamental human rights through huge, continuous and worldwide demonstrations for economic justice. Now more than ever, we need a movement to demand a Domestic and Global Marshall Plan as outlined at www.tikkun.org/gmp. Please go to that site and download the full 32 page color pamphlet and read it carefully–it is the outline of a plan for how to deal with the problem as described above.
Tikkun Wins Best Magazine of the Year Award from the mainstream media’s Religion Newswriters Association
This year’s meeting of the Religion Newswriters Association was held in Philadelphia and its major focus was on how best to cover the Pope’s forthcoming visit. Panels filled with members of the Catholic Church hierarchy, many of them people who strongly disagree with the Pope’s progressive politics, were chosen to give the mainstream media people who attended this gathering a way to think about the pope’s visit. Their problem was obvious: as leaders of the Catholic Church they are not supposed to oppose the Pope, but they also don’t want his message too widely spread to the world, and particularly not to the Catholic world. Their solution was the same that many (not all) of the mainstream media often use when dealing with US elections—rarely report on what the candidates are advocating, focus instead on the personalities of the candidates and their standing in the latest polls.
Translating that strategy into the Pope’s visit, many of the Church leaders urged the media to focus on what a nice guy the Pope is, how caring he is for the poor and down-trodden through personal visits to them, and to avoid politics altogether, including his recent encyclical which linked both global poverty and the accelerating destruction of the environment to the destructive materialism and selfishness and competitiveness that are rooted in the daily dynamics of global capitalism.
Death by Debt – My Response to The German Finance Ministry
Guest contribution by Jeffrey Sachs
Dr. Ludger Schuknecht, senior economist at the Germany Finance Ministry, explains his ministry’s viewpoint regarding Greece. This viewpoint essentially holds that Eurozone countries should live within their means; adjust to their debt burdens; and take their reform medicine as needed. If they do so, they will be successful, as illustrated by Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. Greece has only itself to blame, and indeed was on track to recover as of late 2014 if it had not deviated from its course. I have enormous respect for Dr. Schuknecht as an able and thoughtful economist.
To understand the rise in terrorism worldwide, we must examine the impact of global consumer culture on communities across the planet.
Net neutrality is not just for techies. The digital roots of the Black Lives Matter movement show why we must fight to keep the internet open to all.
The precedents and models exist to make the case for nonviolent statecraft in the United States, but we need to make this case so self-evident that the war options become plainly absurd.
There must be a way out of the present crisis
Leonardo Boff
Theologian-Philosopher
Earthcharter Commission
The political and economic crisis we are now experiencing provides an opportunity for truly profound changes, such as political, tributary and agrarian reform. To have the correct focus, is important to first consider some facts. In the first place, we must see the crisis as part of the great crisis of humanity as a whole, rather than from within, and external to the present course of history. To think of the Brazilian crisis without considering the world crisis is not to think about the Brazilian crisis. We are part of a greater whole. In our case, we cannot escape the attention of the large countries and great corporations, as the Group of 7 considers where the principal assets for the ecological basis of the economy of the future are concentrated: the abundance of drinking water, the great humid jungles, immense biodiversity and 6 billion hectares of farmland. The Imperial strategy does not care that a continental nation in the South Atlantic, such as Brazil, is not aligned with the global interests and to the contrary, seeks an independent path for its own development.
How the culture of capital is perpetuated
Leonardo Boff
Theologian-Philosopher
Earthcharter Commission
In the previous article –The capitalist culture is contrary to life and happiness– we attempted to show theoretically that the strength of its perpetuation and reproduction lies in emphasizing one aspect of our nature, namely, the urge for self affirmation, for strengthening the ego, so that it neither disappears nor is assimilated by others. But this diminishes and even denies another aspect, equally natural, namely, the integration of the self and the individual into a whole, into the species, of which it is an example. Is not enough however to end with this type of reflection. Along with this original point there exists another force that guarantees the perpetuation of the capitalist culture. It is the fact that we, the majority of society, internalize the “values” and the basic purpose of capitalism, namely, the constant growth of profit that allows for unlimited consumption of material goods.
The environmental movement is too fragmented. It’s time to integrate our struggles and recognize the spiritual dimension of our political work.
Corporations are feeding our denial. Climate change cannot be averted without also overhauling the global economy.