Inter-Culturalism

Swiss Muslims thought they had integrated enough…

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I asked an old friend of mine, Andrew Stallybrass, who is an Anglo-Swiss working for an NGO in Geneva, and is Vice-President of the Geneva Inter-Faith Platform, for his take on the minaret ban. Stallybrass’s previous piece of writing for Tikkun was “For a True Islam,” a review of Caroline Fourest’s Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan. He concluded that review by writing of Ramadan, whom he knows, in stark contrast to Fourest, “I’m not alone in trusting the man and his motives.” He added, “democrats should have faith that European Muslims will recognize and embrace the best of Europe while also making valuable contributions to repairing the worst.” [Addition 12/7/09: In an email Stallybrass just told me this information, which I had not seen in the press here: “P.S. There are four minarets in Switzerland today.

Environment

Join us on the Phone Forum with Riane Eisler: Visionary of Partnership Politics and Economics

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I spent way too long blogging about Jared Diamond this morning and don’t have time to say much about our guest on tomorrow night’s Phone Forum, Riane Eisler, except that she has been at the megahistory business much longer than Diamond, and she is equally at ease with the corporate elite as he is, but she tells them in no uncertain terms that Capitalism isn’t going to cut it. Left audiences like to hear her say that. But what she tells them is this: Socialism also won’t cut it. Both are subject to the same kind of economism that fails to see that “the real wealth of nations–and the world–consists of the contributions of people and nature.” Both neglect the non-monetary segments of the economy: the contributions of natural systems and of unpaid work, most of it by women.

Inter-Culturalism

The true meaning of Jihad

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I like this post from last summer that just came to my attention. The Israeli author, Ralph Dobrin, says of himself that “nationalistically I have views that place me more Right Wing than Avigdor Lieberman.” Still, he got into conversation with the Arab workmen whom he hired to renovate his bathroom. Having done a few of those myself I know how nicely the tea and lunch breaks can develop into deep talk with the client. So Dobrin objects to the Arab workmen about Muslim jihadists attacking Israel, and the workmen explain the true spiritual meaning of jihad.

Inter-Culturalism

Swiss Minaret Ban Reinvigorates Xenophobes Across Europe, by Noah Sudarsky

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Our friend Noah Marcel Sudarsky, former New York correspondent for the largest circulation French newspaper, has written us his thoughts about the Swiss minaret ban. Sudarsky grew up in France, Switzerland, and New York. He is a freelance writer and correspondent now living in the Bay Area. His articles and reviews have appeared in The NY Press, The Village Voice, The Onion, New York magazine, Salon.com, Citimag, Publisher’s Weekly, The New York Times, and other publications. While interpretations concerning the Swiss referendum banning the construction of minarets will occupy pundits for a while, the recent vote has already given an undeniable boost to the European far right.

Politics & Society

The Dec 1, 1969 Draft Lottery: 40 Years On

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Pete Cattrell, our Operations Manager here at Tikkun, was looking especially pensive this morning and I asked him why. He was thinking about the cataclysmic day when he was nineteen and all young men and their families across America turned on the TV to find out if they had a potential sentence to go to war, or not. (I was oblivious to this, a twenty-year old student in England.) It was a citizen draft then — believe it or not everyone was eligible in theory, even rich kids — and they held the lottery on TV. It was the first draft lottery since the second world war. For all its life-changing, big-moment drama, as theater the drawing for the 1970 draft was a low-budget affair, staged on a nondescript set with an odd assortment of office furnishings pushed to­gether.

Politics & Society

131,000 homeless vets now: how many more will Obama add?

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Pentagon bean counters see an extra $40 billion in annual costs if President Obama sends 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, but Michael Blecker sees mainly this:
More than 13,000 new cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. An additional 8,000 or so traumatic brain injuries. … The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have produced more diagnosed cases of PTSD and debilitating injuries per capita than any other war in the nation’s history, health care experts say. And veterans who encounter homecoming trouble are becoming homeless more quickly than ever, street counselors say.

Culture

Escapist Movies, Education, CA Bankruptcy, Copenhagen…

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To all American readers: I trust you had a fine Thanksgiving. Our son was home and we did the nuclear family thing and went to two fun movies that we all three enjoyed a bunch: “Pirate Radio,” about the radio station I used to listen to at high school in England, and “2012,” which you wouldn’t think would be fun as it involves the death of almost all life on earth, but it’s so fantastic and unrealistic while being brilliantly presented and curiously full of humanity (though unforgivably as much a male-run world as that of Pirate Radio without any historical excuse for it), that we just sat back and lived through the roller coaster ride. Back in reality, if I was blogging today, which I’m not, being about to go off with the family to do a token soup kitchen stint and then put the lad on his plane back to college in LA, I might have mentioned this beautifully written article about the poverty-stricken state of education in California, by a woman who teaches in a rich school and a poor school simultaneously, or this about the cost of pre-school ($12,000 to $20,000) in San Francisco or this about a school for dropouts that works, run by a convicted bank robber and a former methamphetamine user. The wider story to the recent student sit ins at Cal State schools protesting firings of low income workers and huge increases in student fees is that California, which once had the best financed education in the country now has almost the worst. It all goes back to a citizen revolt against property taxes, Prop 13, passed in 1978, and it’s taken this long for it to bankrupt the state and there are many more bills to pay arising from the high cost of inadequate educations for low income Californians.

Health

Delink health insurance from employment

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My wife Debi Clifford wrote this today to our two senators (Feinstein and Boxer) and our newly elected Representative, John Garamendi. It’s easy enough to sign the form letters and petitions but she’s been wanting to find time for a while to write this one that gives her own experience. Here are links for writing your own personal emails to your Representatives and Senators, and some guidelines for how to do it. If you want to snail mail the letter, do it to their offices in their home state, not to Washington, where mail to Congress is subject to all kinds of security delays. Dear Congressman Garamendi
PLEASE SUPPORT THE PUBLIC OPTION and do not support the trigger proposal.

Politics & Society

End U.S. Wars: Emergency Anti-Escalation Rally Dec. 12

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This message, left on our Tikkun home site here, deserves to be more widely read:
Dear Friends,
Our organization, End US Wars, is holding an Emergency Anti-Escalation Rally on December 12 at Lafayette Park at the White House, Washington DC, from 11am to 4pm. Featured speakers include: Cynthia McKinney, Senator Mike Gravel, Chris Hedges, David Swanson, Kathy Kelly, Betty Hall, Granny D (message), Lynne Williams, Elaine Brower, Mathis Chiroux, Michael Knox, Ron Fisher and others. We are very excited about so many illustrious speakers, with more in the offing. Musical performers include Jordan Page. We expect to do a lot of action in DC around the time of Obama’s announcement.

Rethinking Religion

Is God Improving? Are We?

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There’s a column worth reading by Kristof  today, on liberal views about God, notably by Robert Wright and Karen Armstrong. E.g. this:
Mr. Wright detects an evolution toward an image of God as a more beneficient and universal deity, one whose moral compass favors compassion for humans of whatever race or tribe, one who is now firmly in the antigenocide camp. Mr. Wright’s focus is not on whether God exists, but he does suggest that changing perceptions of God reflect a moral direction to history — and that this in turn perhaps reflects some kind of spiritual force. Be Scofield, my friend and fellow blogger on this site has a low opinion of Robert Wright, especially his idea that there is moral progress, an arrow to history. I like the idea, and think it has historical value.