Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/editorials__actions/page/49/)
Too many liberals and progressives blame voter support for reactionary and ultra-conservative politics on the supposed mean-spiritedness, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, or stupidity of those who vote the other way. By slipping into this easy mindset, we fail to perceive the real yearning so many of us have for a life filled with love, caring, and generosity.
Eager for Tikkun’s take on the 2012 election and other current events? Read the timely articles on our web magazine site (tikkun.org) and the blog posts on Tikkun Daily (tikkun.org/daily).
The mainstream media have frequently framed their discussions about U.S. and Israeli policy toward Iran as a debate between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about whether to strike Iran immediately or to wait to see if sanctions work. This narrative has set the framework for a march toward war by excluding from the discourse the nonviolent option: that we not use coercion to achieve our ends.
NY TIMES June 24, 2012
A Cruel and Unusual Record
By JIMMY CARTER
Atlanta
THE United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights. Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.
Editor’s note: In posting this interview of Sami Ramadani by Samuel Groves of the New Left Project, I do not mean to be endorsing the analysis presented here, some of which makes sense to me and some of which is framed in a very rigid anti-imperialist language which misses the experience of people victimized by the regime as well as the complicated role of the U.S. and of Israel. However, there is enough here that merits consideration to have led me to want to call this analysis to your attention! Between Imperialism and Repression
by Sami Ramadani, Samuel Grove
New Left Project
June 12, 2012
http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/between_imperialism_and_repression
[Sami Ramadani is a senior lecturer in sociology at London
Metropolitan University and has been an active participant
in campaign’s against Saddam’s regime and anti-imperialist
struggles for many years. In an in-depth interview, he spoke
to Samuel Grove about the dynamics of the conflict in Syria,
arguing that democratic resistance to Assad’s brutal regime
has been eclipsed by reactionary forces, backed by Western
and Gulf states, with potentially momentous implications for
the Middle East.]
The upheaval in Syria is an enormously difficult subject for
Western outsiders to get a handle on. One of the reasons for
this is the sheer number of different interests jostling for
position and power, from both within and outside the
country.
Note from Rabbi Michael Lerner: I usually agree with Uri Avnery, but in this case (read his article below), I don’t agree that the (in my mind immoral and disgusting) treatment of African refugees reducible to “racism, pure and simple” as he says in this article below in which he correctly points out the shame that this activity is bringing to “the Jewish state.” In my view, every country in the world uses oppressive and sometimes violent means to keep out those whom it does not want, and those wants are almost always based on both capitalist economic rationales (“there is not enough to go around, so don’t let others share it”) and racist feelings toward others (“they don’t deserve what we deserve because they are less valuable or less truly human that we are”). The problem, in my view, is based on the whole notion of ownership of the earth and of its products that is challenged by Torah ethics (where God says unequivocally that “the whole earth is Mine” and human beings are “wayfarers” on the earth without any right to possess it except to tend it, protect it, and share its produce with everyone). Unfortunately, private ownership, the right to control the land and its inhabitants, is so deeply enshrined in the empire-ideologies that originated long before capitalism but has now reached new heights of penetration into our consciousness through media and education that even those who suffer most in this system of domination nevertheless have internalized its values so deeply that they believe in private property in ideas, land, and products and therefore can easily be manipulated into believing that “their” country will be “taken over” by undeserving others unless they rigorously enforce their borders. We at Tikkun, on the other hand, do not believe in the value, much less necessity, of borders.
Review of this book written by:
Lynn Feinerman dvashah@yahoo.com who writes occasionally for Tikkun Magazine
OBEYING A HIGHER LAW: Making the Case Against Drone Warfare
Review of DRONE WARFARE: Killing by Remote Control
by Medea Benjamin
I had already determined I wanted to review Medea Benjamin’s new
book DRONE WARFARE when I encountered three guys on a Bay
Area waterfront test driving a remote controlled miniature drone toy. The drone was about two or three feet in wingspan, styled like an
F16, and had an intrusive, loud, well…. dronelike buzz. It had the rapt attention of everyone on the waterfront. People
walking their dogs stopped to marvel at the drone as it flew over
the Bay, and returned to buzz around, about a hundred feet over
my head.
We are looking for a full-time personal assistant to Rabbi Michael Lerner, involved in helping to build the community of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue-Without-Walls in Berkeley, who would also be the organizer/outreach person for the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) and do editorial work at Tikkun magazine and possibly become Assistant Editor. (The Network of Spiritual Progressives is the activist arm of Tikkun.) This one-year activist opportunity involves full immersion in the activities of our small yet high-powered non-profit. It includes regular night and weekend work, in addition to standard 9-6pm working hours with an hour for lunch. Our Assistant to the Editor works from our office in lovely downtown Berkeley, across the Bay from San Francisco, and enjoys all the benefits of living in beautiful northern California (3-4 hours ride to Yosemite or to Big Sur). Beyt Tikkun is Rabbi Lerner’s shteebel/shul– a small group of people who meet either Friday night or Saturday morning each Shabbat for Jewish prayer and Torah study.
Crossposted from Haaretz
by Amira Hass
An elephant will be sitting Wednesday in the courtroom of Supreme Court
justices Asher Grunis, Salim Joubran and Noam Sohlberg. The elephant
will occupy the places of the five plaintiffs, who will be absent: five
women from the Gaza Strip who were accepted into Bir Zeit University in
the West Bank. Four want to go on to a master’s degree in gender studies. Of these, three are in their 40s and one is in her 30s. The fifth is a
young woman who graduated from high school with honors and has enrolled
in law school.
Morris Berman has always been an acute reader of American culture and society, so his warnings here need to be taken quite seriously.–Rabbi Michael Lerner
Slouching Towards Nuremberg
Strange things are happening in the United States these days, and every day seems to bring additional scary news. The similarity to the erosion of civil liberties in Germany during the 1930s is a bit too close for comfort. Many will regard this statement as hyperbole, and, to some extent, it is. But let’s take a close look at what is going on before we dismiss the comparison out of hand.
In terms of the historical record for Germany, legal discrimination against Jews certainly existed before the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and grew steadily over time.
A note from the Network of Spiritual Progressives:
The Lee Amendment would have limited spending on the Afghanistan War (currently $2 billion PER DAY) to bringing U.S. troops home. Please read the list of who voted for and who against. Important to remember that Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, leaders of the Democrats in the House, voted AGAINST ending the war. Although the Lee Amendment was defeated(113-303) it is worth noting that a significant majority of Representatives in the President’s own party voted in support of ending the war now. Please remember to call your member of Congress today and urge a NO vote on the 2013 Defense
Authorization Act.
Editor’s Note: Tikkun author Ulrich Duchrow, a professor of systematic theology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and cofounder and moderator of Kairos Euope, an ecumenical network striving for economic justice (see his article A European Revival of Liberation Theology in Tikkun’s Winter 2011 issue) presents us with a statement of European intellectuals speaking out against the neo-liberal austerity economic programs that are the weapon-of-choice by the 1% in its class war against the 99%.
Stop the neo-liberal crisis politics – dispossess the beneficiaries! We are experiencing the deepest crisis of capitalism since the great depression of the 30s – and the European governments continue to pour oil on the fires! From the very beginning, some governments have prevented a solidarity-based solution to the crisis in Europe and are significantly responsible for its exacerbation. This refers particularly to the German government, which, in August 2008, blocked a substantial economic stimulus package for Europe. Hardly had the recession reached its lowest point in Germany in 2009, when the German government preached the necessity for hard austerity policies.
Editor’s Note: Criticism of Obama does not imply support for his political opponents. However one decides to vote in November, one must do so with as full a picture as possible of what policies one is endorsing. How Obama Became a Civil Libertarian’s Nightmare
By Steven Rosenfeld
Obama has expanded and fortified many of the Bush administration’s worst policies. April 18, 2012 |
When Barack Obama took office, he was the civil liberties communities’ great hope. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, pledged to shutter the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and run a transparent and open government.
Note from Tikkun Editor Rabbi Michael Lerner: While Avnery is certainly right that there is nothing automatically anti-Semitic about a German today criticizing the policies of the State of Israel, he is, I believe, underestimating the way his statement, and the predictable denunciations from Israeli politicians, has given cover for actual live German anti-Semites to attack “the Jews” again!!! But that is not to suggest he is wrong to make the points he does make! Please read it!!! Uri Avnery
April 14, 2012
Günter the Terrible
STOP ME if I have told you this joke before:
Somewhere in the US, a demonstration takes place. The police arrive and beat the protesters mercilessly.
Rabbi Lerner’s Note: The argument presented below as a critique of Christian practice is equally applicable to Jewish and Muslim practice as well as to the tens of millions of secularists who do the exact same thing but without giving it a religious sanction. EASTER: SACRIFICE OF THE LAMBS… Inbox
x
Ruth Eisenbud homerific1990@hotmail.com
11:09 PM (10 hours ago)
roast leg of lamb: traditional offering for Easter
EASTER: SACRIFICE OF THE LAMBS… While Christianity claims to have done away with the ‘burnt offering’ or sacrifice of the Old Testament, it has not:.
“Because Jesus is symbolized as a Lamb…and that is like one of His names or titles….He IS the Lamb of God…..Who takes away the sin of the world….and in “type”…He is the Lamb Who was provided for the burnt offering…..” http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090413075531AAE6UGx
There are several problems with this statement.