Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/editorials__actions/page/15/)
By Rebecca Gordon
(an article from our media ally TomDispatch.com)
You know you’re living in a looking-glass world when former Vice President Dick Cheney speaks out against one of Donald Trump’s executive orders. He’s a good example of how past adversaries of movements for peace and justice are lining up against our current adversary, the new president.
By Mark LeVine
It is heartening to see the wide reading being received by Peter Beinart’s January 31 j’accuse in The Forward against Jared Kushner and the Orthodox Jewish religious and educational establishment that produced him. Beinart’s article asks some very difficult questions of American and Israeli Orthodoxy regarding their seeming embrace of an agenda based on intolerance and even hatred of minorities, refugees and other marginalized people in their time of greatest need. Focusing on the weekly Torah portions read and studied by observant Jews (on Jacob’s sojourn in Egypt and the enslavement of the Hebrews), Beinart points out that these most foundational narratives in the Hebrews Scriptures and the portions that come after them—freedom, wandering and the giving of the Torah to the newly formed Nation of Israel, demand precisely the kind of attention to the suffering of others that Trump’s refugee ban so brutally ignores.
Most damning, Beinart discusses the well-known story of Kushner’s grandmother, Rae Kushner, who survived the Holocaust by escaping the ghetto and living in a Belarusian forest for a year. She recorded her story for posterity in 1982.
Editor’s note: here is a perspective on some of Trump’s statements that may help us understand why some people continue to see him as a champion challenging the mush of the establishment. What the author below fails to see is that the truth he expressed below is mixed with so many other distortions (e.g. about the threat of terror from Muslim immigrants) that it has the effect of legitimating the lies that regularly pour out of the mouths of our president and his advisors. Dear All,
Trump again states obvious fact. In response to Bill O’Reilly, who calls Putin a killer, Trump looks O’Reilly straight in the eyes and responds:
“What do you think, our country’s so innocent?”
“You think our country is innocent?”
“Well, take a look at what we’ve done…a lot of people were killed…there are a lot of killers around, believe me”
American journalists and politicians are willfully pretending to be innocent and unaware of the glaring facts of mass murder and displacement of millions by their leaders to achieve political agendas. Trump is going to call it as he sees it.
Interview with Joseph Daher: The new balance of terror in Syria
https://socialistworker.org/2017/02/07/the-new-balance-of-terror-in-syria
The new balance of terror in Syria
February 7, 2017
The scorched-earth war of the Assad dictatorship, backed by allies Russia and Iran, against the Syrian Revolution has attained a critical victory with the conquest of the rebellion stronghold of Eastern Aleppo. Now the left must place a premium on understanding the lessons of what happened–and what it will mean for the region. Joseph Daher is a Swiss-Syrian socialist activist, a member of the Revolutionary Left Current in Syria and founder of the Syria Freedom Forever blog. He will be touring the U.S. and Canada February 9-17 to speak about his recent book Hezbollah: Political Economy of the Party of God. Ashley Smithinterviewed Daher about conditions in Syria and the situation for the remnants of revolutionaries after Aleppo, as well as the role that Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Shia fundamentalist party, has played. Syrian soldiers march into a conquered city
AFTER THE conquest of Aleppo, Assad’s counterrevolution seems to have decisively set back the Syrian Revolution.
THE PEOPLE VS. TRUMP
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah
A ‘Reality TV’ star has become President of the United States. Is it a joke? When ‘President Trump’ was featured on ‘The Simpsons’ in the year 2000 the spectre was supposed to make us laugh – and perhaps also, to make us think… Can we ever know what the future holds?
Editor’s note: Tikkun magazine, as a non-profit, does not endorse candidates for public office nor do we affiliate with any particular political party. We are the voice of Jewish, interfaith, and secular humanist spiritual progressives who seek a world of love and justice. To fully understand what we have in mind, please read www.tikkun.org/covenant and join our interfaith and secular-humanist-and-atheist welcoming NSP–Network of Spiritual Progressives. We do, however, take an interest in the discourse that exists in the liberal and progressive world, and so wanted to interview one of the candidates for the position of chair of the Democratic National Committee, Congressman Keith Ellison, who shares some of the concerns that have been raised by Tikkun and the NSP over the course of the past thirty years. So this is one of many dialogues that Rabbi Lerner has had with Congressman Ellison over the course of the past twelve years.
El maley rachamim, shocheyn ba’meh’romeem. Master of compassion, God of compassion, send your blessings to Muhammad Ali, send your blessings to all who mourn for him, and send your blessings for all the millions and millions of people who mourn for him all over this planet. I come here speaking as a representative of American Jews—and to say that American Jews played an important role in solidarity with African-American struggles in this country and that we today stand in solidarity with the Islamic community in this country and all around the world.
I SHARE WITH I’m sure virtually all of Tikkun’s readers a feeling of pain and horror at the acts of racial and ethnic violence that have occurred since the election of Donald Trump. And I of course agree that the rhetoric of Trump’s campaign has had the effect of stirring up and legitimizing the expression of these racist and xenophobic impulses in terrible and alarming ways. But it does not help our efforts to respond to and counter these realities to simply denounce the Trump campaign or Trump supporters as “being” racist or xenophobic as if their violent and cruel behavior were just an expression of their evil essence or brainwashed minds. Instead, we must look deeply into the impacted conditions of their psychological, spiritual, and economic lives to see what in their experience has led them to burst out by the millions in response to Trump’s message.
The Clear and Present Menace of SciLence
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, FACLM
FollowDavid L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, FACLM
Founder, True Health Initiative
I heard from a public health colleague this week, whose work and time are partly funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that the CDC did not want to be acknowledged as a funding source in a research paper addressing gun violence. Apparently, CDC scientists have marching orders to be more concerned about unflattering facts about gun violence, than about gun violence itself. That’s ideology 1, epidemiology 0. The score does not improve after that. In high-profile media coverage you have likely seen, we learned that the Trump Administration had, in an early indication of its ominous priorities, effectively issued gag orders to the USDA and the EPA. Apparently, we the people are to be kept uninformed not only about guns, but also about such matters of minor importance as our food supply, and the environment. And perhaps everything else, too, since the White House message to the press was: just keep your mouth shut. The new normal, apparently, is to stand our ground- except where facts are concerned. We want no part of those. Let’s be clear, silence where science ought to be is a grave threat to us all. Those of you who are avowed fans of science as I am need no convincing. To anyone else: well, there is no one else. Just about everyone is a fan of science, it’s just that some don’t realize it. Everyone using the Internet; everyone who has ever flown on a plane or driven across a suspension bridge; anyone who has ever gone out to enjoy the spectacle of a perfectly predicted eclipse or meteor shower…is a fan of science. So, too, is everyone who has ever thrown a light switch. Apparently, the switch is being turned off in the White House to keep disquieting facts in the shadows. The EPA, for instance, told us about lead in the water in Flint, Michigan. In a world where the EPA is muzzled, we might still be in the dark about that. The USDA tells us about food-borne outbreaks, and recalls. Silence, in this case, aids and abets the designs of salmonella.
Against amnesia: The empire under Obama
There is already nostalgia for the Obama years among people who care about justice and peace. But we should question the rosy picture, writes Khury Petersen-Smith. President Barack Obama speaks to U.S. soldiers
EVEN BEFORE Barack Obama left office, an effort was underway to secure his legacy as a progressive and an idealist. And now that Trump has taken the throne of American power, the mythology surrounding the Obama years will only grow. The myth presents Obama as a tragic figure: committed to a progressive agenda, but more committed to national unity.
Editor’s note: Judge Pryor is one of the 3 top candidates Trump is said to be considering for the Supreme Court. The Freedom From Religion Foundation has issued a report on him which we are reprinting below. We support a strong “separation of church and state” (we put the quotes because we mean to include separation of the public arena from all religions, not just Christianity, and because we hold that not just for the U.S. but for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, India, Pakistan, and the list goes on to include every country where religion is being forced upon people by the state. At the same time, we believe that religious values have the same right as other values to contend for support in the public sphere (some of which we support, others of which we don’t support). The big mistake of the separationists is that they have confused these two things, and in their desire to keep religion out of the public sphere they’ve often pushed religious values or any other kinds of values out of the public arena or our educational system.
אם אינך רואה אימייל זה כראוי לחץ/י כאן
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Haqel: Jews and Arabs in Defense of Human Rights
An Eyewitness Account of The Preventable Tragedy in Umm Al Hiran
Dear Friends and Supporters,
On Wednesday I was an eyewitness to an unnecessary tragedy, fueled by a series of wrong decisions and indifference. Two Israelis are dead, one a Bedouin resident of Umm Al HIran and the other a Jewish police officer. Homes have been demolished, two MK’s and others have been injured. Mutual anger and distrust threatening the very fabric of Israeli society has been increased. We need you to respond by sending a letter to your nearest Israeli embassy and donating to our Bedouin campaign.
THE DAY AMERICA KILLED ITSELF
by Abby Caplin
The day America killed itself,
I watched reruns of What’s My Line,
where Dorothy, Bennet, Martin,
and Arlene sat blindfolded, trying to decide
who the mystery guest was. I stared at the Worchestershire sauce
in the fridge thinking,
Of course it has expired. I bought it
years ago, a carbon copy
of petroleum in a bottle.
When America killed itself, the talkers
on TV couldn’t figure what happened
to all their fine-tuning,
all the polls that said
otherwise. But I’ll tell you what happened—
the guy said
the election was rigged,
rigged,
didn’t say how
exactly, but he let the message hang
like a dagger thrown
between a woman’s legs, and then
he won.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama spent the last months of his term leading a coalition in Syria and Iraq that killed hundreds of civilians. As liberals mourn the end of the Barack Obama administration, a monitoring group reported that the U.S.-led coalition killed 450 or more civilians in Syria and Iraq since October. 70% Spike in Civilian Deaths by US-Led Coalition in Syria, Iraq
“With reported fatalities from coalition strikes at record levels we would have expected significant media engagement,” said Chris Woods, director of Airwars, a London-based monitoring group that has been tallying the death toll of coalition strikes by compiling official and local reports. “Instead, anything beyond local reporting has been almost non-existent.”
The count begins from and largely includes casualties from the intense operation in Mosul, which the U.N. says is the largest such offensive since World War II. Most of the rest of the remaining deaths are from the Raqqa governorate but do not include fatalities from the Iraqi Security Forces or Air Force.
Why Do We Turn Off Unneeded Lights Before We Leave a Room, or Before We Sit? by Dale Pendell
The Case:
When, fundamentally, there are no lights. Why would (almost) any of us stoop to save a sentient being, when, fundamentally, there are no beings to save?
The Poem:
As the World Burns
The old masters, we hear,
avoided challenging
the status quo,
as they also
avoided contact
with women,
and refrained from
social activism. Considering
the crimes of history,
the Buddha wondered
what to do.