General News

Justice for Mohammad Akhlaq

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On this auspicious day—Gandhi Jayanti (Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday) and International Day of Non-Violence —my colleagues and I at Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus are heartbroken to read the news that a Muslim man, Mohammad Akhlaq, was lynched and murdered by a Hindu mob in Northern India because it was rumored that he killed and cow and consumed the meat. News reports claim that a mob of Hindus wielding bricks, batons, and swords came to the man’s house to hunt him down, beat him to death and severely injure his son and mother.

art

Settle into fall with these crisp online features from Tikkun!

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We present to you our online-access features from the print magazine, like Peter Gabel’s plan for transforming the justice system, as well as web-only exclusives from Marc Gopin, Candace Mittel, and Michael Lerner and Cat Zavis—plus poetry and book reviews!

art

Alison OK Frost Captures the Strange Absurdities of War and Discrimination

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Alison OK Frost creates delicate and disturbing watercolors. Her figures seem to be part of a post apocalyptic world even though they are all drawn from news articles. Stripped of context and background information they float eerily on the white page. Her images use the delicate style of watercolors to express the brutal elements of modern society. She wants to illustrate this dynamic in her work: “A few years ago I took part in the occupy Oakland protest and one thing that was really striking was how beautiful tear gas is, especially at night.

War & Peace

The New Extreme of the American Left

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We must oppose the wars in which this country is now engaged, seeing them as unjust and barbarous and as extensions of empire. While our political leaders deserve the greater part of the blame, the manipulated and deceived of this generation have also earned their share.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Rosh Hashana, 2015

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This is a new era; Congress and the Administration have demonstrated that they can defy the Israel lobby when it comes to key issues of international diplomacy. The same courage is needed to chart a new course towards ending decades of repressing Palestinian rights and freedom.

Culture

A Proposal to Shrink the Supply of Firearms Available for Criminal Use

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Robert Heinlein, a Libertarian Science fiction writer, popularized the phrase “TANSTAAFL.” He was expressing colloquially, by the words “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” a principle popularized in economics by Milton Friedman. The principle, somewhat oversimplified, is that whenever there is an exclusive choice whichever alternative is taken has an opportunity cost associated, the opportunity to choose another alternative. Reality is often a little less simple. There is no free lunch but there are many relatively governmentally highly subsidized lunches and many much lower or totally unsubsidized ones. That is the case with seeking to reduce harm from the presence in America of between its’ possibly 270 – 300 million firearms. A gun redemption program can only be successful under the motto “Go Big, or Go Home.”
The dialog over harm reduction from firearms is stagnant.

Politics & Society

Donald Trump and the Ghost of Totalitarianism

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Under neoliberalism the public is urged to become consumers, customers, and highly competitive while taught that the only interest that matters are individual interests, almost always measured by monetary considerations. Under such circumstances, social and communal bonds have been shredded, important modes of solidarity attacked, and a war has been waged against any institution that embraces the values, practices, and social relations endemic to a democracy.

Judaism

Rosholushion

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Rosholushion (ˌro-shə-ˈlü-shən) n. 1. Rosh Hashanah resolution 2. a resolution arising out of a restorative justice-type process that includes an intention to make amends, to forgive and be forgiven. Why a new word? To distinguish it from the seemingly similar but actually quite different New Year’s resolution.