Noam Chomsky on “The Iranian Threat”

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Editor’s note: Noam Chomsky’s analysis (read below after reading this) is an important counter to the endless drum of US propaganda from both parties about the threat from Iran. So much self-deception is thrown at Americans that we are not to blame when even the best among us begins to repeat analyses that forget or obscure the actual role that the US plays in the world today, as Chomsky begins to outline (though he doesn’t really explore the more powerful distorting role of global capitalism, which is not to be blamed solely on the US).

Editorials & Actions

The Sum Stratagem–a strategic plan for the remnants of the Occupy movement by Zevin X Cruz

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Editor’s note: this strategy does not capture the strategic ideas we’ve develop in Tikkun and in The Left Hand of God book, in the NSP strategy paper “Yearing for a World of Love and Justice, we’ve developed at www.spiritualprogressives.org/covenant  and in our trainings for spiritual progressives. Nevertheless, it is a strategy that  has some serious thinking behind it, and that is very rare these days among secular progressive activists, so it deserves our attention.–Rabbi Michael Lerner
The Sum Strategem
by Zevin V. Cruz
“Zevin X. Cruz” <zevinxcruz@gmail.com>
“We’re not going to change the world one person at a time. We’re not going to clean up our ghettos one block at a time or save our national debt one dollar and one balanced budget at a time, or solve the crime problem in America one criminal at a time. It’s a nice fantasy, but that’s about all it is—a fantasy. “Economies of scale make a difference.

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Change the Conversation about Justice by Rabbi Rachel Mikva

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Throw the [Good] Book at Them: Changing the Conversation about Justice
by Rabbi Rachel Mikva
 
Romain Dukes says President Obama has given him his life back.  Expecting to spend the rest of his years in prison after being convicted in 1997 of distribution and conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine, Dukes is among the forty-six individuals who recently had their sentences commuted. Jason Hernandez says the same thing; sentenced at age fifteen to life without parole for his part in a drug conspiracy, he’s been out since 2013 after the president commuted his sentence. Hernandez works as a welder (a trade he learned in prison), and mentors juvenile offenders at Café Momentum in Texas, eager to make a difference in the lives of these teens:

I hope one of these days when they ask the president, “What were some of your greatest decisions?” And when he names the Affordable Care Act and the other accomplishments that he has done, that he also says, “You know what? There’s also the Clemency Initiative and that one Mexican kid, named Jason Hernandez. I’m glad I let him out because he has done so much for the community.” That’s kind of how I live my life.

Editorials & Actions

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I Worked at AIPAC 6 Years…But Now It Shames Me As an American Jew
by M.J. Rosenberg
August 6, 2015 mjayrosenberg

President Obama’s speech at American University defending the Iran agreement against charges made by the Israeli government and its lobby in the United States (along with the lobby’s wholly owned subsidiaries in Congress) was, for me, the worst moment yet in my long history with the lobby in general and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in particular. I saw something I never expected to see, something that appalled and offended me more than anything the lobby has done before. I saw the President of the United States brought to the point where he felt it necessary to give a major foreign policy address defending his foreign policy against Netanyahu and AIPAC. Every charge Obama felt the need to rebut was a charge made by Netanyahu or the lobby. Obama himself conceded that when he noted that Israel is the only country in the world that opposes the Iran agreement.

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Two Apologies from Rabbi Lerner

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Two apologies from Rabbi Lerner  a minor one and a major one

1) The minor apology is that the mailing of the Summer issue of Tikkun was delayed by something going wrong at the printers. That issue should have been mailed in mid-July and instead is coming sometime in mid-August. So sorry. As you probably know, the print issue of the magazine is only available to subscribers and members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives and is not the same as the articles you find on line at tikkun.org or the Tikkun Daily blog. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do so now at that website.

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Readers Respond to Our Conference Call with Obama

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On July 30th, the Tikkun and Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) community, along with a variety of other groups, was invited to a conference call with President Obama. During the call he spoke about the nuclear agreement reached with Iran and urged us to become active in supporting that deal in light of the ferocious opposition of the Republicans, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and many national American Jewish organizations. President Obama referenced the failure of peace-oriented people to stop the disastrous war in Iraq and urged us to become visibly engaged in supporting this agreement, which he said would prevent the only other possible alternative for those who want a denuclearized Iran, namely a war with Iran. Of course, I had hoped that there would be a chance to engage directly with Obama, but he simply continued to do what he has done ever since we helped to elect him, namely talk to us but not with us. Still, many members of our Tikkun and NSP community tuned in for the talk and then sent their responses to me.

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The Pope’s Anti-Capitalist Message

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Will Pope Francis’ strong message meet resistance in US? Michael Sean Winters  |  Jul. 31, 2015

Francis in the United States

Print  email  ANALYSIS   WASHINGTON

Those looking for clues of what to expect from Pope Francis when he visits Cuba and the United States at the end of September should study his trip to Latin America. Francis’ eight-day trip to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay July 5-12 accentuated almost every theme of this pontificate. At a large prison in Bolivia, he told the prisoners, “I could not leave Bolivia without seeing you.”