General News

Election Day 2012

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I voted yesterday, Election Day Eve, at my city’s Board of Elections Commissioner’s office. I had errands to run yesterday, and I wanted to work uninterrupted today. So, I went to the third floor of City Hall and cast an in-person absentee ballot. I was happy to have the choice to vote early, yet the convenience of it did not in any way detract from the importance and the beauty of casting my vote. The office is a small room, and when I arrived there were only a couple of people in line ahead of me.

Politics & Society

Vote Power and People Power

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If we suspect foul play it will not do to remain silent, as we have done in the past; this has to be the last straw if it is not to be the last gasp of our faltering democracy. But neither will it do to explode in unstructured rage.

Environment

A Misleading Defense of Genetically Modified Foods

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The FDA’s so-called determination that GM foods are as safe as conventional ones was not made by its scientists and was not based on scientific considerations. Rather, it was driven by political and economic pressures and guided by a deputy commissioner for policy who, as a partner in a major law firm, had previously represented Monsanto – and who was hired by Monsanto as a vice president after the FDA’s fraudulent policy was established.

Politics & Society

Jeffrey Goldberg was a Follower of Meir Kahane

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Goldberg is a sort of Jewish media mandarin who defines what is polite pro-Israelism in American society. If you pass muster, you become part of the acceptable Jewish mainstream. If not, you are sentenced to a form of anti-Israel Siberia. But let’s not make the mistake of thinking Jeffrey Goldberg was the only Jewish youth who succumbed to the siren song of Kahanism. There are many now- powerful Jewish leaders and academics who cut their teeth in the movement.

General News

Romney: "The war that's coming to kill all the Jews – our church believes that."

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Mitt Romney’s end-times theological beliefs have largely remained in the shadows during this election. However, a secretly-recorded video has resurfaced from Romney’s first presidential run, bringing renewed attention to Romney’s apocalyptic beliefs. The video, recorded in 2007, shows Romney arguing off-air with conservative radio host Jan Mickelson, who prods Romney about his Mormon beliefs and attempts to get Romney to admit how different Mormonism is from evangelicalism. Angrily and somewhat haltingly, Romney explains the LDS Church’s end-times theology, and how parts of its apocalyptic Second Coming theology aligns with evangelical teachings. While all of the video is worth viewing, the part in question begins at the 1:30 mark, in which Romney says:
Christ appears – it’s throughout the Bible – Christ appears in Jerusalem, splits the Mount of Olives to stop the war that’s coming in to kill all the Jews.

Education

Doing the Right Thing: From Tolstoy to Minimum Wage

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Recently two seemingly unrelated events came together: I volunteered for Measure D to raise the minimum wage in San Jose to ten dollars an hour, and I watched another episode of the BBC’s excellent production of War and Peace. In the episode I watched, a wealthy family, the Rostovs, is crating up their numerous possessions, china, furniture, dresses, vases, and clocks, to flee Moscow in the face of Napoleon’s oncoming troops. They look out the window: a long line of wounded Russian soldiers is wending its exhausted way through the city – now abandoned by most of the rich. At first, the family watches, curious, as the soldiers drag and are dragged past their front door. Then the daughter, Natasha, a person of great spirit and integrity, asks what it could hurt to let the wounded be brought inside and laid on the floor; the family is leaving the city anyway for their country estate.

Environment

Hurricane Sandy: Time to stop digging?

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“You don’t hit bottom,” says an old 12-step adage, “until you stop digging.” In other words: no bad experience, painful consequence, or downright awful time in and of itself will lead people to change. When we are thoughtless, reckless, destructively selfish, or blind to the effects of our actions on ourselves and others – and when all this leads in a Very Bad Direction, we can still hold on to the negative habits and damaging behavior. We can always close our eyes, turn our backs, and deny, deny, deny.