What Ever Happened to Civilian Control of the Military?

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Pentagon Excess Has Fueled a Civil-Military Crisis
How Civilian Control of the Military Has Become a Fantasy
By Gregory D. Foster

Item: Two U.S. Navy patrol boats, with 10 sailors aboard, “stray” into Iranian territorial waters, and are apprehended and held by Iranian revolutionary guards, precipitating a 24-hour international incident involving negotiations at the highest levels of government to secure their release. The Pentagon offers conflicting reports on why this happened: navigational error, mechanical breakdown, fuel depletion — but not intelligence-gathering, intentional provocation, or hormonally induced hot-dogging.

Editorials & Actions

Pope Francis Restores the Good Sense of Jesus–by Leonardo Boff

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Editor’s Note: We at Tikkun continue to rejoice in the good teachings of the world’s most prominent Spiritual Progressive– Pope Francis. If only his teachings could become mainstream within his own church instead of being resisted by so many conservative forces within the Catholic hierarchy! And if only all the other branches of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Budhism, Jainism, Quakerism, Unitarian Universalism, Moromonism, and the varieties of secular humanism and atheism could produce leaders with this level of courage and insight to bring the world closer to becoming drenched in the love and compassion that this great teacher of humanity seeks to spread. For our part, and with all due humility at our own limitatiions, we once again invite those who want to build a global transformation of consciousness in the direction that is described below by Leonardo Boff (explicating the teachings of Pope Francis) to join with us as members of the interfaith and secualr-humanist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives (read the Spiritual Covenant atwww.spiritualprogressives.org/covenant and then join the Network as full members at www.spiritualprogressives.org/join). Together we can amplify this message of love and compassion and build support for those in every sphere who want to build economic, political, social, religious and spiritual practices and ways of life that embody this way of being!

Editorials & Actions

BDS Boycotts, Divestment, Sanctions by Uri Avnery

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Uri Avnery

March 12, 2016

 

                                    The Great BDS Debate

 

HELP! I am walking into a minefield. I can’t help myself.  

The minefield has a name: BDS – boycott, divestment, sanctions.  

I am often asked about my attitude towards this international movement, which was started by Palestinian activists and has spread like wildfire throughout the world.

Editorials & Actions

Notes on Spirituality

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Cultivating a Spiritual Life
By Dave Hood

A man strolls through the woods, listening to the birds chirping, the rustling of the leaves, the river flowing in the background. A middle-aged woman takes photographs of her urban setting, and then creates expressive paintings. A young man takes up Buddhism, meditates, and strives to live a compassionate life. A young woman studying to become a social worker fights for social justice, attending a peace march. What does each of these people have in common?

Activism

Indigenous Activist Assassinated in Honduras

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Indigenous Activist Berta Cáceres Assassinated in Honduras
Human Rights Organizations Demand an Investigation of the Circumstances Surrounding the Assassination of Berta Cáceres, the General Coordinator of COPINH

HONDURAS – At approximately 11:45pm last night, the General Coordinator of COPINH, Berta Caceres was assassinated in her hometown of La Esperanza, Intibuca. At least two individuals broke down the door of the house where Berta was staying for the evening in the Residencial La Líbano, shot and killed her. COPINH is urgently responding to this tragic situation. Berta Cáceres is one of the leading indigenous activists in Honduras. She spent her life fighting in defense of indigenous rights, particularly to land and natural resources.

Editorials & Actions

A Solidarity with American Muslims Rally

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Here’s the story of one of the many “solidarity with American Muslims” events that the NSP has been supporting around the country. It appeared today, Monday Feb 29th,  in the San Jose Mercury. I thought you might want to see it to know that your voice is being heard–because it is your support of Tikkun and the NSP that makes alot of these kinds of events to happen. The story is not bad for mainstream media–about half right which ismore than most mainstream media stories in my experience. At the bottom, I’ll tell you what I really said in the 3 minutes that I got to speak.

Editorials & Actions

Jeffrey Sacks on How to End the Syrian War and Human Tragedy

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 Editor’s Note: Whenever we paste articles on our home site, we do so because the perspective is one that is rarely discussed in the mainstrean media–NOT because we necessarily agree with it. This particular perspective is given little attention because to do so would be to weaken one of HIllary Clinton’s claims to the presidency–that she has the experience in foreign affairs that Bernie Sanders does not and strengthen Sanders claim that having the experience does not equate with having the wisdom, since it was during her time as Secretary of State that this huge mess developed in large part because of US policy (or at least that it the allegation by Sacks). But there is a problem that the Sacks perspective needs to address. The nonviolent demonstrations against Assad were met with violence and repression. What exactly are people around the world supposed to do in such circumstances?

Editorials & Actions

Dr. Shaikh Ubaid: Irony–The Rise of Trump Can Be Good For American Pluralism

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Dr. Shaik Ubaid:
The irony that the Rise of Trump Can Be Good for American Pluralism

I dislike Donald Trump. Yet I am grateful to him. No not because I believe in his particular philosophy of making America great again but because he can save America from people like him. Islamophobia has been on the rise for many years and it had become politically acceptable.  But before the bombastic and narcissistic Mr. Trump joined the race to lead this nation, the media and the political leaders including Mr. Obama, were  not paying much attention to it.  Like an insidious cancer, this poison was spreading in the body of our great nation.  Mr. Trump was a symptom that finally led the physicians to take notice. Trump is not the pain of hemorrhoids but of the deadly and insidious pancreatic cancer.Before Mr. Trump, Congressman Tancredo of Colorado had suggested that America should bomb the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Editorials & Actions

Israel’s New Police Chief and Kippot by Uri Avnery

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Uri Avnery
February 27, 2016
Holy Water
HE APPEARED out of nowhere. Literally. The Israeli Police needed a new commander. The last one had come to the end of his term of office, several senior officers had been accused of molesting their female subordinates, one had committed suicide after being accused of corruption.  So somebody from outside was indicated. When Binyamin Netanyahu announced his choice, everybody was amazed.

Editorials & Actions

Note From An Israeli to Fellow Israelis

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TO MY FELLOW ISRAELIS – AN OPEN LETTER 

by  Jonathan Ofir

This is probably a culmination of nearly a decade’s reviewed study of our history. At some point, beyond the singular stories, cases and arguments, I feel something unequivocal and very generally encompassing needs to be said about our Israeli ‘miracle’, the manifestation of the Zionist ‘dream’. I will not write this in Hebrew, although that would probably have been the most direct idiomatic tool to reach your minds. I will not do so, because I have had enough of dirty laundry recycled amongst us ‘self-understanding’ Israelis. Whilst I write to you, my hopes of change coming from within us Israelis have regrettably declined in the years – and thus, I am also, if not more so, placing my bets upon the involvement of the international community – whose help we need so badly – not for more cash, weapons, or apologetic ‘understanding’, but rather for its intervention in what we are apparently unable, and mostly unwilling, to fix.

Economy/Poverty/Wealth

The Sanders “Economic Plan” Controversy

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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. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

This post first appeared at Campaign for America’s Future. “When you dare to do big things, big results should be expected. The Sanders program is big, and when you run it through a standard model, you get a big result.”
– James K. Galbraith

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says he wants the American people to join him and “fight for a progressive economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all.” His website outlines a number of proposals toward this end, including increasing taxation of corporations and the wealthy and using the money to repair the country’s infrastructure, extending public education four years to cover college, extending Medicare to everyone, expanding Social Security and addressing climate change.

Editorials & Actions

S.F. Police Murders (Murderous Police in the City of Love)

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 Murderous Police in the City of Love
Posted by Rebecca Gordon

In one of the widely circulated cellphone videos of the killing of Mario Woods by San Francisco police in December, you can hear the young girl filming his death screaming. “Are you fucking serious?” she shrieks over and over at the crowd of cops encircling the young black man. According to police, Woods had refused to drop a kitchen knife they claim he was carrying. He was nonetheless attempting to walk away from the officers.

Other Voices

Saving the Earth by Reconnecting to the Life of the Spirit

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by Leonardo Boff
        Theologian-Philosopher

      Earthcharter Commission

If it is true that climatic disturbances are anthropogenic, that is, that they have their genesis in the irresponsible behavior of humans (less of the poor, but much more of the great industrial corporations), then it is clear that the issue is more an ethical than a scientific one. This is so because the quality of our relationships with nature and with our Common Home were not, and they still are not, adequate and positive. Pope Francis says in his inspiring encyclical letter, Laudato Sii: on the caring of the Common Home, (2015): «Never have we mistreated and hurt our Common Home so much as in the last two centuries…These situations provoke the howls of Sister Earth, joining the wails of the abandoned of the world, with a cry that demands that we take a different path» (n. 53). That different path urgently implies a regenerative ethic for the Earth.

Editorials & Actions

Major American Jewish Leader Changes His Mind About Israel

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An Amazing Turn for a Major Leader of the American Jewish mainstream: David Gordis Rethinking Israel
David Gordis  has served as vice-president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles (now American Jewish University). He also served as Executive Vice President of the American Jewish Committee and was the founding director of the Foundation for Masorti Judaism in Israel. He founded and directed the Wilstein Institute for Jewish Policy Studies which became the National Center for Jewish Policy Studies. David Gordis is President Emeritus of Hebrew College where he served as President and Professor of Rabbinics for fifteen years. He is currently Visiting Senior Scholar at the University at Albany of the State University of New York.  Here is the article he submitted to Tikkun.