Culture

Henry Giroux on the Assault on Youth in the US

By |

Editor’s Note: This article appeared first in the wonderful daily website Truth Out and can be read there also. Perhaps the most drastic element of the war on youth in the U.S. is the willingness of the powerful to continue to squander the resources of the planet earth and destroy the life-support system of the planet. Having abandoned hope in any real transformation of the world, the powerful are willing to continue to amass wealth and power and to ignore all the scientific data that shows that if we continue in the path that we’ve been on for the past several hundred years, the youth of today will be suffering an environmental catastrophe brought on by the selfishness, materialism, chauvinistic nationalism that together are the consequences of global capitalism. Yet the war on youth today has the consequence of making many of them less willing to embrace the kind of seemingly utopian transformations of our society without which the logic of the capitalist order will continue and may yet yield a fascistic outcome to protect the powerful from the righteous indignation of those who will be suffering through the decline of the earth in the next fifty years. That’s why the ESRA–Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment is at once so important (read it please at www.tikkun.org/esra) and so frequently dismissed as “too visionary to be realistic.”

War & Peace

Predators, Near and Far: The Afghan Health Crisis

By |

The U.S. pours billions of dollars into surveying Afghanistan, flying Predator drones over cities, towns and roadways, claiming to better understand “patterns of life” in Afghanistan. But the war system establishes tragic patterns of death, of poverty, misinformation, desperate insecurity, and continued despair.

General News

Helen Diller Family Foundation Seeks Young Applicants

By |

The Helen Diller Family Foundation is now accepting nominations for the 2016 Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Awards, a program that recognizes up to 15 Jewish teens annually with $36,000 each to be used in support of a social justice project or to further their education.

Politics & Society

A Very Convenient Truth

By |

The tentative gestures toward sensible gun control that have become part of the routine do little else than evoke cries of righteous indignation from frightened people, clinging to their weapons for a security weapons can never furnish.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Stop the Killing in Israel and Palestine: A Prayer, Analysis & Strategy

By |

So where did all this violence in Israel and Palestine come from? Where shall we start? If you want the big historical picture from 1880 to the present moment, you’ll get two very different narratives depending on who is telling it. In my book Embracing Israel/PalestineI try to tell the story in a way that is sympathetic to each side, and critical of each side. The truth is that each side has at times been cruel and unreasonable toward the other.

Culture

Breaking The Gentlemen’s Agreement

By |

I believe that the power of corporate America, the power of Wall Street, the power of the drug companies, the power of the corporate media is so great that the only way we really transform America and do the things that the middle class and working class desperately need is through a political revolution when millions of people begin to come together and stand up and say: Our government is going to work for all of us, not just a handful of billionaires. These words were spoken by Senator Bernie Sanders during the first Democratic Party debate among presidential candidates who hope to win the party’s nomination. The Washington Post has made a full transcript available online. In it, the word “billionaire” appears 13 times, all of them voiced by Sanders. Here’s another sample:
I am the only candidate running for president who is not a billionaire, who has raised substantial sums of money, and I do not have a super PAC.

Christianity

Why Did the Pope Choose Francis as His Name?

By |

The guiding principal for St. Francis was the emphasis on poverty after opening the missal. But the point was not simply helping the poor, though this was done, but rather upon the notion of the Friars’ turning away from property and earthly possessions, and toward the will of God. This anti-materialism also left an imprint on Pope Francis as evidenced by his railing against capitalist exploitation of the vulnerable and the obsession with profit at any cost, primarily in the United states and Europe.

General News

What will happen to Cuba after normalization with the United States?

By |

Cuban President Raúl Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama announced almost a year ago that we would begin the process of normalization of relations between the two countries, after more than 50 years of strained relationships including a U.S. embargo. It is no surprise that experts can’t agree on what will happen. Diplomatic relations with Cuba will be unlike diplomatic relations with any other country. Cuba is unique and fascinating in many areas: geography, environment, history, politics, and culture. While there are daunting challenges ahead, I will focus this piece on strengths I gained awareness of during my first trip to Cuba in April 2015.