Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/110/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
We are looking for “something else.” Something that will give us what might be called pleasure, but is in reality something far more enduring. Something of deeply felt meaning that will finally bring an end to the repetitive frustration that commonly comprises our lives. Something that will make us simply happy without a cause.
I switched on my computer early this morning to get a lovely surprise: Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014. For all those who think Muslim women are too oppressed, too quiet, or too busy being mothers and housewives, to make international news, todays’ announcement from the Nobel Peace Committee may have come as a bit of a shocker. For me, it was validation of a lot of things.
Over the last few months I happen to have seen three films, each as different from the other as are the species that make up the lulav. Taken together, they add up to more than the sum of their parts.
Perhaps Rabin’s pursuit of peace should not have affected attitudes toward Jews at large, but they did. By the same logic (the imperfect logic of human beings), Netanyahu’s war on Gaza affects attitudes toward Jews at large. You can’t keep saying “we are one” and expect anything else.
If you are one of tens of thousands of people who can’t stand to hear another story about another black man being shot by another policeman, you may want to go to Ferguson, Missouri this October 10-13. Your showing up may not stop the shooting(s), but at least it will let people know that you see. You hear. You notice.
This time it will be different. That’s what President Obama said as he assured the American people that an American effort to “degrade and destroy” ISIL, the vicious terrorist group, “will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
No, Mr. President, it won’t. Not in any meaningful sense. This is just more war, and it is certainly not a Just War according to many of the tradition’s principles.
The biblical phrase is reversed in that we see the beam in our own eye and ignore the systemic class and ethnic violence that cover our planet. We need to know that our national obsessions may obscure our transgressions elsewhere.
While independent research shows that Chlorpyrifos, a Dow Chemical insecticide used in Kaua‘i’s GMO fields, can cause significant harm to children nearby, Dow is intent on convincing the EPA otherwise.
Lita Kurth reflects on Dr. Cornel West’s moving speech at Santa Clara University over the weekend.
The bottom line is that without changing our political system, it is unlikely that the United States will ever do anything to end the occupation. This is not to say that the occupation won’t end. It very well might but through actions on the ground in the Middle East, by Palestinians themselves, rather than due to anything our government does.