Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/editorials__actions/page/20/)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Editor’s Note: America’s most famous right wing Republican rabbi is a very decent human being in his personal life even as he publicly supports cut backs in services and financial assistance to the poor and supports the repressive policies of the Israeli government toward Palestinians. And below in his article about proselytizing he makes some points worthy of discussion. There are many people in the Bay Area where I have our progressive Beyt Tikkun synagogue who would gain a huge amount from exposing themselves to the variant of Judaism we embody if they were to convert and become part of our community. Moreover, we would gain a lot–because I’ve found that converts to Judaism (including born-Jewish-but-not-practicing-Jews) often bring with them sensibilities and consciousness that elevates the Jewish world. If you know someone looking for a deep spiritual consciousness and who simultaneously wants to be involved in social justice, environmental sanity, and building a world of love and generosity, ask them to attend our High Holiday services this coming October (info at www.beyttikkun.org)–they’ll find a wonderful group of people creating a Judaism that is both liberatory and transformative.– Rabbi Michael Lerner rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com
It’s Time for the Jews to Proselytize
By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
No matter how you look at the demographic studies, one thing is clear, the number of Jewish people is not increasing as we continue to lose Jews and potential Jews every day through intermarriage, assimilation, and alienation.
But, Mr. Putin, You Just Don’t Understand
By David Swanson
http://davidswanson.org/node/5238
Once in a while one of the videos somebody emails me a link to turns out to be well worth watching. Such is this one. In it a former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union tries to explain to Vladimir Putin why new U.S. missile bases near the border of Russia should not be understood as threatening. He explains that the motivation in Washington, D.C., is not to threaten Russia but to create jobs. Putin responds that, in that case, the United States could have created jobs in peaceful industries rather than in war.
“Pow, Pow, Yous Are Dead!”
Children, Toy Guns, and the Real Thing
By Frida Berrigan
[From our ally TomDispatch.com]
It was a beautiful evening and the kids — Madeline, two; Seamus, almost four; and Rosena, nine — were running across a well-tended town green. Seamus pointed his rainbow flag with the feather handle at his sisters and “pow-powed” them, calling out, “Yous are dead now, guys. I shot yous.”
Madeline and Rosena laughed and just kept on running, with Seamus at their heels. I hid my face in my hands. It wasn’t just that he was playing guns, but that he was using a Pride flag as his gun at a vigil to mourn those killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
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.
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.
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.
The Big Rift
by Uri Avnery (chair of the Israeli peace movement Gush Shalom)
THE State of Israel was still young, when two famous comedians produced a short act:
Two Arabs stand on the seashore and curse a boat carrying new Jewish immigrants. Next, two of the new immigrants stand on the seashore and curse a boat carrying new immigrants from Poland. Next, two immigrants from Poland stand on the seashore and curse a boat carrying new immigrants from Germany. Next, two immigrants from Germany stand on the seashore and curse a boat carrying new immigrants from North Africa. And so on…
Perhaps this is the story of all immigration countries, like the US, Australia, Canada et al.
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.
Editor’s Note: This article below demonstrates that the BDS movement’s claims to be successful are very exaggerated. At the same time it shows a critical weakness of the BDS strategy–its ability to switch the discourse from what’s wrong with the Occupation to the rights and wrongs of the strategy of BDS. On that terrain, the Israeli rightwingers seem to be winning, whereas on the terrain of discussing the Occupation itself the Netanyahu government could more easily be shown to be ethically deformed and systematically violating the ethical principles of the Jewish people throughout most of our history and violating the explicit commands of our Torah. As such, BDS is a gift to the rightwingers. This is one of several reasons why Tikkun only supports boycotting products from the settlements but does not support a general bds against all aspects of the State of Israel.
Editor’s Note: The events described below are part of a consistent pattern by the Israeli government to make life unbearable for the Palestinian people living inside Israel. We receive these kinds of reports every week, and rarely put them up on our website, and are only putting this story on the website to remind our readers that this is happening over and over and over again as the Occupation continues. Those who wonder why random Palestinians living inside Israel sometimes resort to violence (actions we condemn) need only place themselves in the position of those who see or personally experience this kind of violence on behalf of an Israel that shames the Jewish people and desecrates our Torah by calling itself “the Jewish state.”–Rabbi Michael Lerner
Occupation forces demolish Palestinian homes in Jerusalem for two consecutive days
Occupation forces demolish Palestinian homes in Jerusalem for two consecutive days
Published July 21st, 2016 – 05:00 GMT
Bulldozers escorted by Israeli policeand Jerusalem municipality inspectors demolished on Wednesday several Palestinian structures located adjacent to the Atarot settlement industrial park north of Jerusalem, a day after structures were torn down in neighboring Beit Hanina, as well as in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. One of the owners of the structures, Kamal Abu Sneina, told Ma’an that Israeli forces and municipality inspectors deployed into the area and started to tear down his structures while the owners were not present. “When we arrived, we were forced to stay away,” Abu Sneina said, adding that police officers detained him inside a police vehicle while the demolition was carried out.
Editor’s note: Tikkun magazine does not endorse or oppose any candidate or political party. But we do encourage our readers to send us articles representing their perspectives. We again request that those of our readers who support or oppose any of the major candidates for President of the U.S. in the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian or Green parties to submit articles reflecting their perspectives. –Rabbi Michael Lerner
Could Hillary Be Any Worse? Sure, Add Tim Kaine to the Ticket
By David Swanson
http://davidswanson.org/node/5225
Tim Kaine has been consistently ranked as one of the least progressive Democrats in the U.S. Senate.