General News

Saving Mohammed Abu-Mustafa: the Complexities of Israel/Palestine in Shlomi Eldar's 'Precious Life'

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One of our readers just emailed me (I’m back from vacation, and from getting our Sept/Oct issue to print before that, which is why you haven’t heard from me for a while):
For the last several; weeks I have been following Tikkun Daily. I watch Israel get beaten into the ground as if it is the bad guy in the region. Rarely do I see columns that reveal the complexity of the conflict from all perspectives. Recently I came upon the review of a documentary by Shlomi Eldar entitled “Precious Life”. I checked to see if anything in Tikkun Daily was written about it and I found nothing. I am hoping it comes to the US so I have the opportunity to see it.

General News

Park 51 and America's Unresolved Pain

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Whenever we allow resentment and pain and fear and unforgiveness and will to revenge have place in our hearts or in our country, we continue to be subject to the event that caused us the pain and to the people that caused the event. We are never free of them. When we forgive and remember, when we love and remember, when we do good while we remember, we are free. We have taken back our moral agency.

General News

Ramadan Blues – A Short Story

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http://goatmilkblog.com/2009/01/22/ramadan-blues-a-short-story-by-wajahat-ali/

A child prepares food for Iftar (evening meal) before the breaking of fast on the first day of Ramadan. (REUTERS/Athar Hussain)

The story originally appeared in the anthology, POW-WOW (Da Capo Press, 2009). “I promise.” The young boy – ashamed, dishonored, and fearing the wrath of a vengeful, omnipotent Allah – promised his Pakistani immigrant father with conviction and resolve. “I promise not to eat during my fast.

General News

Why the Leftist Critique of Obama is Important

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If there is one thing that characterizes American politics today it is the idea that leftists are idiots. This, of course, is a long-term derivative of the original idea, formulated in the late forties, which was that leftists are traitors. The original charge has been endlessly repeated, worked over, softened, even sublimated so to speak, so that now it seems benign: oh yes, the leftist, still in the playpen, the charming but no longer dangerous idiot of American politics. Given the widespread assumption that the real action in American politics lies in the struggles between “realistic,” “mature,” “problem-solving” “progressives” and Neanderthal Republicans, one has to wonder why it is so important for defenders of Obama to scapegoat leftists. Why, in other words, they have to explain that there are “limits” to what any President can do, that it is “necessary to compromise,” that previous periods of reform also had “fits and starts,” as if they were speaking to children who know nothing of politics, history and human nature.

General News

Alan Grayson, Progressives and the Regulatory Process

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As the Progressive movement has grown, we have become increasingly proficient at influencing the passage of legislation. We’ve learned to place strategic calls and ads as bill move through committee. We’ve learned about reconciliation and other parliamentary procedures. We have pushed stimulus funding, a health care reform bill, and a financial regulatory reform bill over the legislative finish line. But alas!

General News

Jesus in Love to Anne Rice: You can be pro-gay AND Christian

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Of course anyone who reads this blog or Tikkun magazine, especially our current issue at right, knows that. But it seems best-selling author Anne Rice, who followed up her vampire novels with novels about Jesus, isn’t so sure. It all hinges on the definition of “Christian:”
“I remain committed to Christ as always,” she explained further on Facebook, “but not to being ‘Christian’ or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried.

General News

Shame on the ADL for Opposing the Mosque Two Blocks from Ground Zero

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The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) publicly opposes the construction two blocks from Ground Zero of the Cordoba House (also known as Park 51), which the planners imagine as hosting a range of activities similar to those offered at the 92nd Street Y and would include a Mosque at which Muslims could worship. The plan, supported by Mayor Bloomberg, is opposed by some who have consistently used the attack on the World Trade Center as justifications for war and for stoking fear and hatred of Muslims.
ADL leader Abe Foxman presented the position of this organization, which claims to oppose discrimination, by reading a formal statement that seemed to be a perfect example of “shooting and crying” (first you attack brutally, then you cry about how sad it is to be put into this difficult position, often blaming the victims for having “forced” you to attack them). The key to that statement was this:
Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right.

General News

We the People: Are We in Charge?

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And who is in power, anyway: the elected officials or those who finance their campaigns? How do We the People hold our economic and political elite accountable? Voting? Petitioning? Lobbying? Demonstrating? Do these time-honored/worn methods still work?

General News

When Positive Thinking Becomes Religion: How "The Secret" and Law of Attraction Poison Spirituality

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We must understand that the founder of a cult or new religion has no room for compromise: absolutes are necessary. True believers in mystical psychotherapy will not embrace a gospel with modest claims: it must be all or nothing. – Martin Larson
“He could go to school and daydream.” That was the advice given by positive thinking guru, law of attraction teacher and “channel” Esther Hicks aka “Abraham” to a black woman who asked how her son should approach learning about the difficult history of slavery in school. After telling the curious mother “none of that [slavery] has anything to do with him,” and that “he won’t have to deal with it” Abraham-Hicks proceeded to equate the teaching of African-American history with a family legacy of passing down “bad” feelings.

General News

Obama and the Nineteen Sixties

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How are we to understand the malaise, the feelings not only of disappointment but also of disinterest, depoliticization and even hopelessness that the Obama Presidency has brought in its wake? The “liberal” supporters of Obama, such as David Remnick, Hendrick Herzberg or Jonathan Alter give us two contradictory explanations. On the one hand, the campaign raised too-high expectations, there was bound to be a let down. On the other hand, they also tell us that Obama has been a spectacularly successful President, “delivering” health care, financial reform, and saving us from a Great Depression. In either case “we” – the disappointed Obama supporters, in a word, the left – are subtly reproached for our immaturity, our lack of realism; their’s is a sort of: “thank-you-very-much-for-your-help-in-the-campaign-but-lets-leave-things-to-the-grown-ups-until-the-next-campaign” approach.