Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/page/36/)
On July 30th, the Tikkun and Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) community, along with a variety of other groups, was invited to a conference call with President Obama. During the call he spoke about the nuclear agreement reached with Iran and urged us to become active in supporting that deal in light of the ferocious opposition of the Republicans, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and many national American Jewish organizations.
Will Pope Francis’ strong message meet resistance in US? Michael Sean Winters | Jul. 31, 2015
Francis in the United States
Print email ANALYSIS WASHINGTON
Those looking for clues of what to expect from Pope Francis when he visits Cuba and the United States at the end of September should study his trip to Latin America. Francis’ eight-day trip to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay July 5-12 accentuated almost every theme of this pontificate. At a large prison in Bolivia, he told the prisoners, “I could not leave Bolivia without seeing you.”
Death by Debt – My Response to The German Finance Ministry
Guest contribution by Jeffrey Sachs
Dr. Ludger Schuknecht, senior economist at the Germany Finance Ministry, explains his ministry’s viewpoint regarding Greece. This viewpoint essentially holds that Eurozone countries should live within their means; adjust to their debt burdens; and take their reform medicine as needed. If they do so, they will be successful, as illustrated by Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. Greece has only itself to blame, and indeed was on track to recover as of late 2014 if it had not deviated from its course. I have enormous respect for Dr. Schuknecht as an able and thoughtful economist.
Pope Francis: zealous guardian of the Common Home
Leonardo Boff
Theologian-Philosopher
Earthcharter Commission
Given the patron saint who inspired his name –Saint Francis of Assisi–, Pope Francis has everything in his favor to become the great promoter of a world ecological project. It has to be him, because, as we face the threats affecting the common destiny of the Earth and the human family, sadly, we lack leaders with the authority and convincing words and deeds to awaken humanity, especially the governing elites, and the sense of collective and individual responsibility to safeguard it for all. This wish was fully realized with the publication of the encyclical, «Laudato si’: to care for the Common Home». Pope Francis offers us a wide-ranging text of rare intellectual and spiritual beauty – of holistic ecology, uniting that which was so valuable to Saint Francis of Assisi, and is to Francis of Rome: an attitude of caring for sister and Mother Earth and a preferential love for the condemned of the Earth. This connection runs through the entire text like a conducting cable. There is no true ecology, of any kind, be it environmental, social, mental or holistic, if it does not rescue the humiliated of humanity, the impoverished millions of our times, for whom the Earth Mother is most gravely attacked and degraded.
The New Brutalism and the Racist Killing Fields in America:
The Death of Sandra Bland
by Henry A. Giroux
On July 9, soon after Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old African-American woman, moved to Texas from Naperville, Illinois to take a new job as a college outreach officer at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M, she was pulled over by the police for failing to signal while making a lane change. What followed has become all too common and illustrates the ever increasing rise in domestic terrorism in the United States. She was pulled out of the car by a police officer for allegedly becoming combative and pinned to the ground by two officers. A video obtained by ABC 7 of Bland’s arrest “doesn’t appear to show Bland being combative with officers but does show two officers on top of Bland.”[i]
In a second video released by the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas state trooper Brian Encinia becomes increasingly hostile toward Bland and very shortly the interaction escalates into a shouting match and becomes confrontational.[ii] During the interaction, Bland is asked by the officer to put out her cigarette she refuses stating “I am in my car, why do I have to put out my cigarette?” Encinia then opens the driver’s door, and quickly attempts to physically remove her. He then states “I’m going to drag you out of here.” Bland says “don’t touch me, I’m not under arrest.” Encinia then pulls out his Taser, points it at Bland, and says “I will light you up.” Spokespersons for the State troopers later admitted that “Encinia did not follow proper procedure; ….
Editor’s note:
Avnery is sage in his analysis, but too much into big-power-politics thinking for comfort. As a result he underplays the role of ideology, and understates the evil deeds of the Iranian mullahs against their own people. Some people respond to the balance of power argument, then, by saying that Iran is more serious about ideology and hence might be willing to do a first strike on Israel even if that did lead to their own destruction. But here we agree more with Avnery–it is precisely because of their ideology that makes them want to remain the society that brings Islam to the world. To be the advocate for a growing Islam, rather than its grave-digger, a Muslim Iran has to avoid being wiped out by a second retaliatory strike by Israel should the Iranians use the nuclear weapons they will likely eventually acquire in ten or twenty years.
July 1, 2015
Interdependence Day Celebration
Transforming July 4th into an event affirming the value of everyone on earth and affirming our interdependence with them and with the earth itself
Faced with July 4th celebrations that are focused on militarism, ultra-nationalism, and “bombs bursting in air,” many American families who do not share those values turn July 4th into another summer holiday focused on picnics, sports and fireworks while doing their best to avoid the dominant rhetoric and bombast.
We in the Network of Spiritual Progressives believe that this is a net loss. There is much worth celebrating in American history that deserves attention on July 4th, though it is rarely the focus of the public events.
We also acknowledge that in the 21st century there is a pressing need to develop a new kind of consciousness—a recognition of the interdependence of everyone on the planet. A new (and this time, nonviolent) revolution is necessary—one in which our actions reflect a realization that our well-being depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet and of the planet itself.
We’ve designed the following material as a possible guide for individual families or for public celebrations that share the values we hold.
The worldview of Tikkun and our NSP–Network of Spiritual Progressives
by Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor, Tikkun Magazine
We live in a world filled with loving and caring people. We all crave a world filled with love and care. Yet most of us doubt that we can experience a loving and caring world beyond our own private lives and homes. Why? Because the ethos of the capitalist marketplace, which places greatest value on money and power, has infiltrated our personal lives, shaping our unconscious and conscious beliefs about “human nature.”
In the economic marketplace we are taught to look out for ourselves, maximize our profits, and do what we need to do to get ahead, even at the cost of people we care about.
Hearing God’s Prayer—Inside and Outside of Religion
a review of God’s Prayer by Michael Kagan, by Ya’qub ibn Yusuf
God’s Prayer is a collection of messages which the author, Michael Kagan, experienced receiving from God. We might call it a book of contemporary prophecy. It begins with a call to all human beings to stop abusing one another as well as the planet which supports us. It proceeds with particular messages for the Jewish, Christian and Islamic communities: each one is seen as having a mission to fulfill which requires our going beyond our current pre-occupation with ourselves. The book goes on to address the significance of Jerusalem and the times in which we live, and the deeper implications of healing ourselves and the earth.
Alon Goshen-Gottstein
Founder and Director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute. Acknowledged as one of the world’s leading figures in interreligious dialogue. Over the past 4 years, 42 Churches, mosques and monasteries were vandalized, attacked or torched in the Holy Land. A very narrow section of the Orthodox Zionist world has engaged in what is in fact religious terrorism. Initially a form of political protest, that channeled hatred of the religious other as part of its political message, it has taken an ugly turn and become an outright attack on other religions.
THE STRANGE ALLIANCE OF FUNDAMENTALIST JEWS AND CHRISTIANS WHO
ACHE FOR ARMAGEDDON
BY
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
—————————————————————————————————————————–
It has often been said that politics makes for strange bedfellows. This adage is certainly reflected in the unusual alliance between fundamentalist Jews and Christians, who have joined together to oppose the creation of a Palestinian state and, now, to oppose any nuclear agreement with Iran and to silence campus debate on the Middle East. In June, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson held a meeting in Las Vegas to raise funds and create an organization, Campus Maccabees, to aggressively counter the movement on some college campuses to divest from companies doing business in the occupied territories and to boycott and divest from Israel, the so-called BDS (Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment) movement. Adelson calls this movement “anti-Semitic,” although many of its leaders and supporters are Jewish. Open debate is being challenged, somehow, as “hate speech.”
Editor’s Note: as a Jewish and Interfaith magazine, we seek to publish the most love-and-justice-and-environmentally-sensitive articles we can find from any religious or spiritual or secular humanist perspective, feeling at some level deeply aligned with people of all faiths or none who want the NEW BOTTOM LINE as defined at www.spiritualprogressives.org/covenant. A Christian Humanist Manifesto: November 14, 2012 by Roger E. Olson
Few words provoke such a negative reaction among conservative Christians as “humanism.” Few single words so well summarize secular culture and its anthropocentrism as “humanism.” In the popular imagination, anyway, “humanism” evokes the impression of what media talking heads call “the indomitable human spirit” and conservative Christians call “man-centeredness.” By itself, however, without adjectival qualifications, “humanism” simply means belief in the dignity, worth and cultural creativity of human beings. Add “Renaissance” to “humanism” and you get Michelangelo and Shakespeare. Add “secular” to “humanism” and you get Aldous Huxley and John Dewey. What do you get when you add “Christian” to “humanism” and is that even possible?
Editor’s note: While we at Tikkun have not signed on to the BDS movement in part because of the failure of its most prominent proponents in the U.S., e.g. Jewish Voices for Peace, to unequivocally separate themselves from the parts of that movement that seek the end of the State of Israel, we do support the boycott of goods from West Bank settlements and boycotts of Western firms that have used the West Bank as their base or that aid in the occupation or benefit directly from it. These distinctions are important, because we do not support a full boycott of the State of Israel, but do support (and helped shape) the resolutions passed by the Presbyterians and the United Church of Christ in this regard. If our contributing editor Prof. Stephen Zunes is correct in his interpretation of Hillary Clinton’s letter, then if she becomes the Democratic candidate for President in 2016 many liberals and progressives may find themselves faced with the kind of choice they faced in 1968 in having to choose between supporting a foreign policy hawk as Clinton seems to be wanting to portray herself on Zunes’ interpretation, though also being relatively progressive on some domestic issues, and a true extremist from the Republican Party (in that case in 1968 it was Nixon). As it turned out, Nixon ended up pursuing the same militarism that Humphrey was pledged to continue from his boss LBJ, but actually supported some of the most progressive legislation on environmental issues that Humphrey might have been too timid to support. In our Winter 2016 issue we will deal with the issue of “lesser evil” politics from a variety of perspectives.
Interdependence Day Celebration
Transforming July 4th into an event affirming the value of everyone on earth and affirming our interdependence with them and with the earth itself
Faced with July 4th celebrations that are focused on militarism, ultra-nationalism, and “bombs bursting in air,” many American families who do not share those values turn July 4th into another summer holiday focused on picnics, sports and fireworks while doing their best to avoid the dominant rhetoric and bombast.
We in the Network of Spiritual Progressives believe that this is a net loss. There is much worth celebrating in American history that deserves attention on July 4th, though it is rarely the focus of the public events.
We also acknowledge that in the 21st century there is a pressing need to develop a new kind of consciousness—a recognition of the interdependence of everyone on the planet. A new (and this time, nonviolent) revolution is necessary—one in which our actions reflect a realization that our well-being depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet and of the planet itself.
We’ve designed the following material as a possible guide for individual families or for public celebrations that share the values we hold.
Syriza: Plunder, Pillage and Prostration
James Petras
Introduction
Greece has been in the headlines of the world’s financial press for the past five months, as a newly elected leftist party, ‘Syriza’, which ostensibly opposes so-called ‘austerity measures’, faces off against the “Troika” (International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and European Central Bank). Early on, the Syriza leadership, headed by Alexis Tsipras, adopted several strategic positions with fatal consequences – in terms of implementing their electoral promises to raise living standards, end vassalage to the ‘Troika’ and pursue an independent foreign policy. I will proceed by outlining the initial systemic failures of Syriza and the subsequent concessions further eroding Greek living standards. Winning Elections and Surrendering Power
The North American and European Left celebrated Syriza’s election victory as a break with neo-liberal austerity programs and the launch of a radical alternative, which would implement popular initiatives for basic social changes, including measures generating employment, restoring pensions, reversing privatizations, reordering government priorities and favoring payments to employees over foreign banks. The “evidence” for the radical reform agenda was contained in the ‘Thessaloniki Manifesto’ which Syriza promised to be the program guiding their newly elected officials. However, prior to, and immediately after being elected, Syriza leaders adopted three basic decisions precluding any basic changes: Indeed, these decisions set it on a reactionary course.