Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/politics__society/page/43/)
“Thou Shall NOT Take Vengeance” is a key law of Torah, but it is being ignored in Israel today both by the government and by significant parts of the people of the State of Israel (read Chemi Shalev’s article and Gideon Levi’s article). We at Tikkun condemned the kidnapping of three Israeli teens several weeks ago, and we rejected the suggestion by some on the Left and some in the Palestinian world that this act had to be contextualized to the Occupation.
America’s Real Foreign Policy: Global Corporatization by Force
Whose security is the U.S. military and foreign service protecting? by Noam Chomsky
US soldiers participating in live fire drills during NATO training in Germany. (Photo: flickr / cc / MATEUS_27:24&25)The question of how foreign policy is determined is a crucial one in world affairs. In these comments, I can only provide a few hints as to how I think the subject can be productively explored, keeping to the United States for several reasons. First, the U.S. is unmatched in its global significance and impact. Second, it is an unusually open society, possibly uniquely so, which means we know more about it. Finally, it is plainly the most important case for Americans, who are able to influence policy choices in the U.S. — and indeed for others, insofar as their actions can influence such choices. The general principles, however, extend to the other major powers, and well beyond. There is a “received standard version,” common to academic scholarship, government pronouncements, and public discourse. It holds that the prime commitment of governments is to ensure security, and that the primary concern of the U.S. and its allies since 1945 was the Russian threat.
Remember the fascists in Ukraine? Turns out the Ukrainian far right does not seem to pose as much of a threat to the democratic development and security of Ukraine as some have claimed.
We must face stories of suffering children, as well as the stories of suffering that we tell to children, in order to understand the religious tropes at work in American culture…. By facing our wounds across boundaries, we can struggle toward the blueprints of rebuilding our memoryscape.
The fossil fuel companies aren’t normal companies. In the last few years we’ve come to understand that they have five times as much carbon in their reserves as we can safely burn if the world is to meet its agreed climate target of limiting rises in temperature to below 2 degrees. That is to say, if they carry out their business plan, the planet tanks. What this means in turn is that if you hold these stocks you in effect are wagering that the planet will do nothing to limit climate change.
Whereas previous generations of revolutionary activists demonized technology, today’s generation has recognized the incredible opportunities to engage citizens that new technology affords. The emergence of the Open Source movement, which emphasizes continual modification and improvement, points to a future defined by generative justice: the constant generation of value within harmonious local networks.
To grow strong, the multifaceted Left in America—including those who call themselves “liberals” or “progressives” as well as others who simply draw upon the central teachings of the Torah to love our neighbors as ourselves—must come together around our shared basic value of interconnection.
To steer our culture aggressively in a different direction, the Left needs what right-wing groups have long used effectively—power, influence, and, perhaps most importantly, money. By utilizing a concentrated and ongoing stream of funding from a diverse group of sources, small voices will again have the chance to speak out and be heard.
In the last forty years, the Left has utterly failed to articulate any viable alternative to neoliberalism’s vision of a fully marketized society. Still, the current global crisis of capitalism has made clear the contradiction of a civilization directed toward profit accumulation rather than human need and thus defined the task of an emancipatory Left: we must master capitalism’s own drive toward universality by making its benefits truly common.
On the morning of January 9, 2014, Charleston residents noticed that the air smelled like licorice and that the water tasted like it too. Inspectors soon traced the odor and taste to a chemical storage facility owned by a company called Freedom Industries. There, near the bank of the Elk River, inspectors discovered that a 48,000-gallon tank was leaking an industrial chemical called MCHM (methylcyclohexane methanol) used to cleanse coal.
Let me offer a simple, alternative definition of what “Lenin” stands for: the view that great social change depends to some significant degree on “leadership.” That is, social change depends on groups of people who have developed effective organizing skills, concrete social connections in milieus engaged in protest, and some shared sense of a future to be won—and thereby can foster and advance momentum toward the desired transformation.
The Left is moving from a politics of mourning and melancholy to a politics of anxiety. For a left bedeviled by a “will-to-powerlessness,” this shift might well turn out to be an unexpected bit of good news.
The American Left needs all sorts of things. Rather than dwelling on its own history, it would serve itself much better by pressing for serious economic equality—and politicizing the ongoing economic crisis.
America needs a Left that approaches social change without “economistic” blinders, countering capitalism not by appealing to it, but by opening space for people to no longer be dominated by its logics. Making efforts to relieve the debts of those in need—while striving to reimagine our debt-financed society—is a logical starting place.
For a new Left to grow strong, we must rid ourselves of the false notion that unilateral solutions proposed by the Right must be met with isometric plans from a monolithic Left—a shift that requires engaging with the tumultuous and complicated relationships we have with one another. However, it is precisely through working out our disagreements that we will arrive at more sustainable, effective, and just decisions.