General News

She Stoops to Conquer: Notes From the Democratic Convention

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Rabbi Lerner’s Note: Now don’t go jumping to the conclusion that I agree with Jeff St. Clair’s perspective just because I’ve posted it here. As I repeatedly say, we want a variety of perspectives on the elections on our website, and welcome yours if it’s original, lively, says something most of our readers will not have likely heard in the mainstream media, and is smart. That is not the same thing as true or accurate Asi turns out, he has written columns in which he denounces me personally as an apologist for Zionism (I wish he’d send those charges to the American Jewish leaders who repeatedly attack me for being an anti-Israel self-hating Jew!) So you have to judge for yourself if his perceptions match yours on what was happening at the convention. But we thought there were some points here worth considering, though that doesn’t mean we agree with them.

General News

Lerner's Huffington Post article on Sanders Supporters' Dilemma

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THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

Senator Bernie Sanders had two good reasons for endorsing Hillary: 1. His firm belief that the country would be considerably worse off were Donald Trump to win the presidency; 2. If his movement to push the Democratic Party in a progressive direction would had been perceived as having failed to support Hillary Clinton, it would have been blamed if Hillary were to lose in November. If that happened, it would have given progressives the kind of bad reputation consumer advocate Ralph Nader got when he failed to tell his supporters in the 2000 presidential election to not vote for him but vote for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in those few states where the polls indicated that the outcome might well depend on Gore getting the Nader voters. The burden of that would have crippled his movement for many years to come.

General News

The Moment that Defeated Donald Trump

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When Ghazala and Khizr Khan stood before the Democratic National Convention, when Mr. Khan said to Donald Trump: “You have sacrificed nothing and no one”, he defeated the Trump campaign. The words reverberated through the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia and through millions of television screens across the globe with such clarity and truth that while the crowd in the hall cheered everyone watching paused. Everyone knew something important had just happened. Donald Trump will never be president of the United States of America. Mr. and Mrs. Khan are the parents of Captain Humayan Khan who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Culture

Are You Adding to The Empathy Deficit?

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I’m voting for Hillary Clinton. Here’s a quote from my friend Keryl McCord’s Facebook post that explains why:
So tonight I’m calling bullshit on progressives who still think that voting for, well, you know, Voldemort, is okay for progressives because it isn’t. You may want the system to be destroyed but the dogs of war will be unleashed on black and brown people, on Muslims, gays, and women. And if knowing that you still think that’s an option then you are not progressive, nor an ally. You’re just another foot on the neck of the people you supposedly support.

General News

Star Trek Beyond the Trump GOP Brand of Crisis

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After four days of the 2016 Republican doom and gloom be afraid be very afraid convention, after Donald Trump’s forever acceptance speech, I needed to transport myself for a while to another world to live in. I took myself to the movies to see “Star Trek Beyond.” It did not disappoint. The movie made me think about the meaning of leadership, the role of popular culture in our perceptions of reality, and how art imitates life and how life imitates art. This year marks fifty years since the original Star Trek series made its debut on television.

General News

A NATIONAL LIBERATION – WHERE?

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World attention is focused on the long-standing occupation of Palestinian territory by an ever-encroaching Israeli presence which began in 1947. A great deal has been written on this subject and this focus is entirely appropriate. But there is another occupation that has continued for fifty years longer, but which receives scant attention, even among the educated Left. That is the continued occupation of the country called Hawai’i. “Whoa, wait a minute!?

Healing Israel/Palestine

Binarity

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Abdullah Issa was a Palestinian child living in Syria (family of refugees after the ethnic cleansing of 1948 by Israel). He was captured and accused of helping the Syrian government. He had injuries and was thought to be also treated for thallasemia. Pictures show the bandaged boy of perhaps 10 or 11 years old with a catheter in his arm. His captives had him in the back of a pick-up truck (perhaps having taken him from his hospital bed). As he pleaded with them they ignored him and directed their message to the camera against Syrian government then slit the throat of this child. The killer militia shouted Allahu Akbar as the boy was mercilessly murdered. This group is funded and/or supported by the governments of the US, Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. They were considered by those four governments as “moderate rebels”.

Politics & Society

Could Hillary Be Any Worse? Sure, Add Tim Kaine to the Ticket

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Tim Kaine has been consistently ranked as one of the least progressive Democrats in the U.S. Senate. Adding him to the Hillary Clinton ticket would be a kick in the face to Bernie Sanders supporters holding out hopeless hope for some sign of democracy within the Democratic Party.
Kaine was an anti-environmentalist pro-coal governor of Virginia, a supporter of the “right to work” (for less) law restricting union organizing in Virginia, and he is a supporter of corporate trade agreements including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and including fast-tracking the TPP. An extremely loyal Democrat, he nonetheless criticized Democrats in 2011 for proposing higher taxes on millionaires.

Culture

Upcoming Event: Disarm Now: We Stand with Nuclear Survivors for Global Justice

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August 9th will mark the 71st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nakasaki. Activists and concerned citizens will stand with survivors of nuclear weapons and all those harmed by nuclear technology by gathering at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, in conjunction with Chain Reaction: a global action for nuclear disarmament, a nonviolent global movement encouraging nuclear disarmament actions by governments and the United Nations.