Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/editorials__actions/page/7/)
Editor’s note:
Thanks to Tikkun’s media ally TomDispatch.com for its analysis, below, of the European versions of Trumpism by John Feffer and the introduction by Tom Engelhardt. In that introduction, Engelhardt wisely notes that there is a method to Trump’s outrageous tweets–it plays to his most racist base.
Editor’s note: Ariel Dorfman is one of the greatest living writers. Read and enjoy his reflections, inspired in part by the 200th anniversary of the birth of Thoreau. Walden on the Rocks
Ariel Dorfman
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection/Bridgeman Images
J.M.W. Turner: Wreckers—Coast of Northumberland, with a Steam-Boat Assisting a Ship off Shore, 1834
THE bodies are strewn everywhere along the beach. Burials are complicated because nobody knows the names of the dead—mostly women and children fleeing famine and poverty, trying to reach the land of plenty that has been promised to them but finding, instead, an early end in turbulent waters. Spectators gape at the debris from the recent shipwreck “cracked up like an eggshell on the rocks,” while others go about their business.
Editor’s Note: Andrew Lichterman’s analysis (below and online at https://www.tikkun.org/newsite/donald-trump-destroyer-of-worlds. You can share to social media from this link and there are buttons at the end of the piece that allow you to share the piece that way) is an important review of why Trump’s threats of nuclear war are illegal, and why the underlying nationalism to which he appeals is destructive. Lichterman’s work is important to understand and circulate to others. Yet there is a missing element here, namely that we need to understand the legitimate fear Americans have about terrorism after 9/11 and about other irresponsible leaders (including Trump) having access to nuclear weapons.We’ve argued that the key to reducing the risk of nuclear war is not to deny the possibility of threats from other nations (the young leader of North Korea at times seems as much a delusional narcissist as Trump) but to understand that we have to focus on the core beliefs about what will bring real security. We have been arguing for the past thirty years that for both the US and Israel the best path to achieve homeland security is to abandon the failed strategy of domination over others as the best path to homeland security and to replace that with the strtegy of generosity as manifested in Tikkun’s proposed Global Marshall Plan (Tikkun ally Congressman Keith Ellison of Minneapoli introduced House Resolution 87 to Congress in February–supporting our reasoning for a Global Marshall Plan.
Note from Tikkun Staff:
The strength of the lowly: the Theology of Liberation
L
Leonardo Boff
Theologian-Philosopher
Earthcharter Commission
Whenever a World Social Forum is celebrated, a World Forum of the Theology of Liberation is also celebrated three days earlier. More than two thousand persons who work in this type of theology from every Continent participated: from South Korea, several African countries, the United States, Europe and from all over Latin America. The Theology of Liberation implies always having one foot in the reality of poverty and misery and the other foot in theological and pastoral reflection. Without this close connection, a Theology of Liberation deserving of that name does not exist. Every so often we conduct evaluations.
Ever had a frustrating experience on Thanksgiving with friends or family? Your progressive ideas are dismissed as unrealistic or seem to offend people? Here are some tips on how to navigate that at your Thanksgiving table 2017. First, remember that there is a lot to give thanks for in our world today. We ought not let our celebration of all that is miraculous in the universe, our celebration of the continuing bountiful reality of planet Earth, and our appreciation of all the good people in this would be undermined or ruined by having all the conversation focusing on the Trumpists. So step one: encourage friends and family to spend some time celebrating the good, even at the expense of not watching the t.v. or focusing on everything wrong with the world.
Imagine a world where politicians are not bought by corporations, and where corporations have a responsibility for the well-being of the environment and people. We have a proposal that will accomplish both—The Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (ESRA).
Dear senators: Don’t bankrupt our country
Jeffrey Sachs || November 20, 2017 || CNN
Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. Dear Sens. Susan Collins, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, Ron Johnson, John McCain and Lisa Murkowski:
I fear for the future of our country. I know that you do as well.
I do not know the name of that young African American, but I know that the likes of her are our hope for a more united United States and a truly globalized humanity.
The Thanksgiving Myth
by Cliff DuRand
[This talk was given at the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of San Miguel of Allende, November 23, 2008]
In many ways the Thanksgiving celebration is a unique festivity. As harvest festivals go it’s not particularly unusual: families gathering for a special meal to enjoy the bounty of nature and the fruit of the growing season’s labor. Most societies in the temperate zones of the earth have such harvest festivals. In the more northerly latitudes of Canada it comes in October as it does also in north China at the time of the harvest moon. At the latitudes of the United States Thanksgiving comes in late November, after the harvests are in.
Saudi Arabia is embroiled in a war in Yemen that it can’t win. Saudi Arabia seems to have bitten off more than it can chew in Yemen. On March 26, 2015, the kingdom launched Operation Decisive Storm, a broad Arab-Islamic initiative ostensibly aimed at reinstating the government of Yemeni President Abd Rabboh Mansour Hadi, whom insurgents had forced from the capital, Sanaa, a month earlier. More than two and a half years on, Saudi Arabia is no closer to its goal, embroiled in a war that it can’t win. How did the country wind up making such a strategic blunder?
EU member states take major step toward a European army
By Peter Schwarz
14 November 2017
The European Union has taken a major step toward developing the capacity to wage war in the future independently of and, if necessary, against the United States. Foreign and defence ministers from 23 of the 28 EU member states signed a framework document on a common defence policy in Brussels on Monday. Along with Britain, which will leave the EU in 2019, only four smaller countries—Denmark, Ireland, Malta and Portugal—did not sign on to the deal. However, they can do so at any time. With the “agreement on permanent structured cooperation” (PESCO), the EU states committed themselves to close cooperation in the development and purchase of weapons, and in making available troops and equipment for joint military interventions.
FROM GENDER TO JAMAICA
by Victor Grossman, Tikkun’s Berlin Correspondant
It didn’t affect many people directly, but even small victories are welcome these days. Germany’s Constitutional Court just ruled that no-one should be forced to declare themselves officially male or female. It thus created a third open category anyone can opt for (or be opted by parents when still a child). I think everyone can approve this step toward getting along together in the world and join in quiet applause. The Bundestag was given a year to conform to the decision with new laws, reprinting questionnaires and probably some signs.
Rabbi Rothbaum presents a humorous yet actually very serious account of what it means to be a Sodomite today. Though we in the liberal and progressive world might immediately identify his description with the policies of the Trump Administration and the Republican Party, with considerable justice in so doing, we ought to also acknowledge that when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency, their efforts to end homelessness and hunger in the U.S. (much less around the world) were feeble when compared to the spending that they did for the U.S. military. And when inheriting the economic crisis in 2009, the Dems funded a massive bailout of….no, not the people losing their homes because of deceitful or misleading mortgage practices of the banks and investment companies, but rather the large corporations and the investment companies, without getting in return any serious lasting commitment to change their destructive policies. So we are all implicated in the Sodomite sins of our government until we elect candidates who are unequivocally giving priority to ending the suffering of the most vulnerable in our society and around the world (e.g. through Tikkun’s proposed Global Marshall Plan www.tikkun.org/gmp –Rabbi Michael Lerner
How to become a Sodomite in five easy steps! BY RABBI MICHAEL ROTHBAUM | JULY 7, 2017
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been approached by people, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, all asking me the same thing: “Rabbi, I’d like to be a Sodomite, but I just don’t know how to start.”
Believe me, I understand.
The President of Medgar Evers College invited Rabbi Lerner, editor of Tikkun, to speak to their faculty and students about the struggle for social justice. And the President of Brooklyn College invited Rabbi Lerner to speak to the faculty and student body about his analysis of how best to challenge the hate-filled, racist, sexist, homophobic, Islmaophobic and antiSemitic direction American (and, to some extent, world) society has been moving. While Lerner sees how these tendencies have dramatically accelerated since Donald Trump emerged in the past, his analysis is not narrowly restricted to this moment. You can watch a video that presents some selections from his talk at Brooklyn college by going to John Jay College’s faculty member Jim Vrettos’ media show where he introduces the talk and then gives you an unedited (pardon Lerner’s “um”s) selection at: https://youtu.be/8GHA3AKgr8.
Lerner recognizes that even before Trump, right wing forces have dominated the U.S. Congress and a majority of the state legislatures for much of the past 40 years, and that Democrats have often sought to accommodate them rather than to articulate a fundamentally different worldview. We at Tikkun invite you to listen to a selection from his talk: https://youtu.be/8GHA3AKgr8k. If you find his analysis insightful, please help us get his analysis out into the world by sending this talk to everyone you know and pasting it onto your Facebook or other social media pages, donating to Tikkun at www.tikkun.org/donate, or joining our interfaith and secular-humanist-and-atheist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives (no, you don’t have to be religious or believe in God to be a spiritual progressive–you only have to want our society to be governed by a New Bottom Line of love, generosity, environmental responsibiity and awe and wonder at our wonderous universe).
Jonathan Granoff,
President Global Security Institute, UN Representative of the World Summits of Nobel Peace Laureates, and Ambassador for Peace, Security and Nuclear Disarmament of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, Chair of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Nuclear Nonproliferation and a member of Tikkun Magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board. NORTH KOREA: A LOGICAL PATH TO PEACE
11/05/2017 09:40 pm ET
(Ambassador Susan Burk, Jonathan Granoff, Ambassador Douglas Roche, President Jimmy Carter)
President Carter dignified America while in office, started no wars, and since leaving office has exemplified dignity and character and is an expert in dealing with North Korea, successfully. He has offered his help. At each news cycle we hear President Trump reiterate dangerous provocations toward North Korea, only increasing the risk of crisis leading to miscalculation resulting in war and the possibility of nuclear catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. It is shocking to reflect on how extreme his expressions on behalf of our nation actually are. He threatened to “destroy North Korea” in his recent UN speech before the General Assembly thereby defying the laws of war, which require military actions to be proportionate and discriminate between combatants and civilians, thus threatening a crime against humanity, a genocide against over 25 million people. America is a nation based on the rule of law, degrading international law degrades America.