Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/152/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
Arguably were it not for former F.B.I. agent Coleen Rowley, one of Time Magazine’s 2002 Persons of the Year, the American people would never have known that 9/11 may have been prevented. In a far-ranging interview with Tikkun Daily, the famed whistleblower shares her views on government service and a host of other issues.
What if the War on Terror is like using dynamite to eradicate the family of mice living in your walls? A recently launched campaign, The War on Irrational Fear, doubts that the actual threat of terror warrants the massive public expenditures and suspended articles of the constitution that it results in today.
I had a good laugh when I saw the New York Times story last week with the headline: Members of Jewish Student Group Test Permissible Discussion On Israel. The piece told of the decision by the Hillel Jewish student society at Swarthmore College to break with the national organization over its ban on discussions of the Middle East that did not tilt toward the Israeli position. It noted that the restrictions faced by Swarthmore students are far from unusual:
At Harvard, the Jewish student group Hillel was barred from co-sponsoring a discussion with a Palestinian student group. At Binghamton University, a Hillel student leader was forced to resign his position after showing a film about Palestinians and inviting the filmmaker’s brother to speak. And on many other campuses, Hillel chapters have been instructed to reject collaboration with left-leaning Jewish groups.
What is worth discerning as 2013 draws to a close? The discerning eye perceives themes that don’t make headlines, yet may turn out to be the most determinative.
The Daily Beast’s Daniel Klaidman is reporting this morning that President Obama, currently on his Hawaiian vacation, is preparing to rein in the NSA’s bulk metadata collection in the coming year.
We are in the final stretch of our Tikkun Daily Winter Drive– and we are so close to our goal! Thank you to all of those who have helped us fulfill almost three-quarters of our desired funds.
An important debate on the U.S. military and war: How can we stop spinning our national wheel in the mud of war and aggression?
One of Israel’s best online publications – +972 Magazine – has for the first time chosen someone unconnected to Israeli/Palestinian issues as its “Person of the Year.” That person is Edward Snowden. The unusual move by this progressive, politically searing outlet in Israel is testament to just how strongly Snowden’s leaks have reverberated across political spectra. And as +972 Magazine revealed, it is also testament to just how critical Snowden’s leaks are when considering the very nature of the Internet itself, and what it may become. I found this selection from its editors to be quite compelling:
As journalists, we are experiencing firsthand how the Internet has altered our profession, putting some of us out of work while creating new opportunities for others, ones that we couldn’t have imagined a decade ago.
The Central African Republic might be on the brink of genocide. We need to reform the for-pay U.S. military enlistment system to meet international moral challenges such as these.
With Israel set to release a new slate of Palestinian prisoners as part of U.S.-brokered peace talks, John Kerry – at President Obama’s behest – personally asked Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to hold off on announcing new settlement construction plans. Such an announcement could, in the Obama administration’s view, undermine any positive momentum generated by Israel’s prisoner release, thus poisoning the talk’s already murky waters. Today, Haaretz is reporting that Israel plans to thumb its nose at the Obama administration (as well as the EU) by announcing new housing tenders in the West Bank and East Jerusalem after the prisoner release. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to announce Israel’s plans for new housing tenders in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem next week, following the release of the third group of Palestinian prisoners, an official in Jerusalem said Wednesday. Netanyahu did not heed the United States’ request to postpone the announcement of the new tenders and rejected warnings by the European Union which also urged Netanyahu to avoid announcing the new construction following the prisoner release.