Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/politics__society/page/63/)
It is not unusual to see politicians in the U.S. chastising courts for rulings that contravene their party’s interests or ideology, but the recent proposals from Republican candidates would undermine the critical and constitutional independence of the courts. Similar assaults on the courts being carried out by conservative governments in Turkey and Israel are important as cases of these Republican policies being executed.
This quarterly issue of the magazine is available both online and in hard copy. The hard copy of the print magazine will be mailed to our subscribers no later than January 25. Sorry about the delay! This is the first issue mailed by our new publisher, Duke University Press, and we encountered an unforeseen delay in transferring our mailing permit to a new state. Everyone can read the first few paragraphs of each online piece, but the full articles are only available to subscribers and NSP members — subscribe or join now to read the rest!
I want to stop violence, stop violent crime. I won’t live long enough to see that happen if it’s even possible, but I don’t think that my God requires of me that I see the possibility of it but that I do the work.
Seven web-only articles associated with the Winter 2012 print issue on restorative justice.
Among the nations whose regimes it has demonized, the United States has gone to war with North Korea, North Vietnam, Panama, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and sponsored a guerrilla war in Nicaragua and an invasion of Cuba. The current demonization by Western leaders of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has increased the chance of war in the Middle East by inflating Israeli fears that Iran is intent on developing nuclear weapons with which to eradicate the Jewish state from its Muslim neighborhood.
URGENT Dec. 14
The House is currently voting on the conference report for the National Defense Authorization Act which contains language authorizing indefinite detentions of persons SUSPECTED of terror activities detained on US Soil, including US citizens! Don’t be fooled–a future President or Attorney General could use this against anti-war demonstrators or anyone else they determined was “suspected” of terror activities. We fought the War of Independence from England to protect ourselves from this kind of arbitrary use of power without protection of individual rights. Don’t let them destroy what was best in American freedoms!
The ecological and economic problems we face are rooted in a series of reductionist steps, which have shrunk our imagination and our identity, our purpose on the earth, and the instruments we use to meet our needs. We are first and foremost earth citizens.
The headwaters of both the Mississippi and Red River watersheds emerge from our territory, here at Anishinaabe Akiing, and from these same waters come our sturgeon. The most majestic of fish lived well with our people, and sustained us through many of the coldest winter months. It was, however, not to last.
Climate change and extinction are both too narrow. We need to move beyond ecological concerns to reach out to the ever-larger proportion of society focused on eradicating injustice and poverty. We need to reach out to those who now live in fear of losing their livelihoods and homes.
The center of the ecological crisis is not the weather but the ongoing and wholesale destruction of life. We are in the midst of Earth’s sixth mass extinction spasm, accompanied by unfathomable figures such as three to ten species, many of them millions of years old, being extinguished daily.
Call Mayor Bloomberg of NYC, Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland, or whoever is your mayor and suggest that they support the Occupy movement by providing encouragement to social workers, teachers, clergy and others to go down to the Occupy encampments and volunteer time and energy to help those who badly need this support!! Cities are cutting back on vitally needed social services, while at the same time, buying expensive military gear for their police departments. From AlterNet by Joshua Holland, “What If They Sent in Social Services to Help Occupations Instead of Riot Cops to Bust Heads?”:
Occupations across the country have struggled to feed and shelter the least fortunate among us, and then faced often violent police crackdowns at great taxpayer expense. Pause for a moment and imagine what might result if mayors sent in social workers to help people rather than riot police to bust some heads? In a society that tends to avert its gaze from the homeless, the hungry, the addicted and the mentally ill, the Occupy movement’s compassion has become an albatross around its neck.
To live the good life, according to the dominant Israeli ideology, is to be sufficiently secure from physical threats, which is why each and every aspect of life in Israel is carried out under the tutelage of the notion of security. What this security is for, what higher end it serves, is a question seldom asked and never answered.
No Direction Home is a powerful and compelling piece of cultural and political history that fundamentally reframes the history of the modern American family. Whether you lived through the 1970s or not, you will not be able to think about that decade and those that followed the same way again after reading this remarkable book.
TARTUS, Syria — J. Toumajian was shocked when he heard about demonstrators chanting in his small town: “Christians to Beirut; Alawites to tabout [the coffin].” The murderous slogan was being chanted last July by some fifty Muslim extremists demonstrating against the Syrian government, according to Toumajian, an Armenian Catholic.