Politics & Society

A Real Thanksgiving, 2009

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No matter how difficult it may be in a world filled with pain and cruelty, a world facing ecological devastation, wars, global malnutrition and starvation, torture, slavery, and political craziness, there are moments when it is important to stop looking at all the problems and just to focus on all the good. The psalmist said that this is what the focus of the weekly Sabbath or Shabbat celebration should be: “It is good to give thanks..” And that’s part of what Thanksgiving could be about. (Our friends in Canada, or those around the world who celebrate a Thanksgiving at other times or as part of their own spiritual or religious tradition, can still use these ideas). I don’t mean only a moment of sharing “something we all appreciate” as people are chomping down the traditional meal.

Politics & Society

The Neoliberal Presidency

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Everyone who has lived through the last few decades knows what has been going on. Every institution in American life, and many throughout the world, have been reorganized in the interests of raising profits. Let us start with the corporations. They previously served several ends including public service and obligations to their employees, to their communities, and to their nations, as well as making profits. Not any more.

Politics & Society

Some Good News: African Wild Fruit and a World of Good

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As the famous poem, “Sometimes” (which the author famously doesn’t want her name to be associated with) goes,
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail. Sometimes — or at least now — tens of thousands of African farmers can eat better, send their kids to school, mend the roof, and have some hope: in this case thanks to a sweet collaboration with some visionary people from our side of the North-South divide. I was just about to celebrate it on this blog when my eye caught another project by American graduates that is really helping. IF YOU had come here 10 years ago, says Thaddeus Salah as he shows us round his tree nursery in north-west Cameroon, you would have seen real hunger and poverty.

Health

Obama’s Political Troubles, and Ours

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A story is being circulated to explain Obama’s political difficulties, especially the losses in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York. According to this story, Obama ran an idealistic campaign, but then encountered the practical difficulties of governing, thereby disillusioning many “independents,” and leaving the way open for the Republican scoundrels to attack him. Like most political spins, this one implicitly portrays “idealists” as naïve, unpractical, and irrelevant. It’s important, therefore, to have a counter-narrative, especially since it also has the merit of being true. It was, broadly speaking, a center-left politics that underlay the extraordinary enthusiasm of the Obama campaigns.

Politics & Society

Clinton's Visit to Pakistan

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Secretary Clinton’s visit to Pakistan has been remarkable in the candor and sense of relative equality in her exchanges with the Pakistanis. The students, women, and other groups with whom she met do not like American policy, and they let that be known. Clinton listened to their objections, but argued instead that an anti-terrorist alliance between the Pakistani and American militaries was the way to go. She treated them as peers and rivals. She did not condescend, and they did not treat her as representing an overweening bully against whom they had to protest.

Politics & Society

U.S. Chamber Of Horrors

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A nice email here from StopTheChamber.com, relating to The Yes Men’s latest brilliant prank. U.S. Chamber Of Commerce To Sue Itself For Fraud And Self-Parody? Washington, DC: On Thursday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to an internet provider threatening legal action if it did not shut down the Yes Men parody website, because the website falsely portrays the Chamber’s position on global warming. However, in its letter, the Chamber falsely inflated its membership by 1,000 percent and falsely alleged copyright infringement. The Yes Men lawyers strongly opposed this take-down demand and the site remains up at www.chamber-of-commerce.us.

Politics & Society

Borders, Limits, Scarcity, and Generosity

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This is provoked by Sam Ewell’s post, and also by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s work on the economy, especially his recent article in the Christian Century called “Economics for Disciples. An alternative investment plan.” These New Monastics are challenging. Sam wrote about borders that keep poor people out of rich countries, and about the limits to capitalist growth, and what these two kinds of boundaries might have in common. The word that came to my mind, that is often used about both, is ‘scarcity.’

Health

Obama's Health Plan Re-examined

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Everyone knows that a meal in an expensive restaurant will probably taste better than a meal in a cheap restaurant, that a $5000 sofa will probably look better than a $500 sofa, or that a $500,000 house will probably be in a better location and be better built than a $50,000 house. Why is it then that Obama’s supporters are so convinced that cheaper health care will be better health care? There are at least four reasons to question their assumption. First, medicine is not a hard science like physics or chemistry. It has a hard science dimension, but it is also a clinical practice, more akin to art in some ways than science.

Politics & Society

The Real Unemployment Rate and: If Unemployed Beware of Self-Blame!

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If 15 million people are unemployed at the same time, are they each individually to blame? Of course not. How could they be? You can discuss that with us on our Tikkun Phone Forum topic tomorrow night (more below). The Rate
If you count the “discouraged workers” (who gave up looking in the last year) and the “marginally attached workers” (who gave up before that but would take a job if offered) and those who need a full time job but are meanwhile working part time, the number of unemployed is more like 27 million people.

Culture

Repurposing

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I’ve noticed that increasingly I’ve been getting irritated with friends when they refer to me as “retired”. They seem, fairly enough, puzzled by this. Wasn’t it Peter who held a wonderful online retirement party when he stopped teaching high school in 2003, who happily lives on the pension with which the Ontario Teachers Pension fund continues to supply him, and who collect Canadian Pension payments from the federal government? Most of all it puzzles them because I described myself as retired. And now all of a sudden I’m bridling and sputtering that I’m not retired?