Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/politics__society/us_politics/page/17/)
Save the Pope’s Radical Prophetic Message from Media Trivialization
By Rabbi Michael Lerner
The recent national conference of the Religion Newswriters Association in Philadelphia focused on preparing the several hundred media attendees for how to cover the Pope’s visit to the U.S. this week. But in panel after panel, we were presented with leaders of the Catholic Church who were unsympathetic to the Pope’s message.
Now that recent Senate votes have guaranteed that the agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program will go into effect, what more can America do, beyond the strictest vigilance, to build on this historic breakthrough for peace? Perhaps it is time for the citizens of the United States to experience a breakthrough of their own, to go beyond past prejudices against their enemy and use the occasion to gently plunge into the deepest wells of Persian identity that originate in a civilization preceding ours by many centuries. We can do so by connecting with Rumi, a Sufi master born in 1207, whose luminous, salacious, mystical verses written in Farsi are carried by all Iranians in their hearts, as we do the words of Shakespeare. To read even a small selection of Rumi’s witty poems to his beloved can help shatter the blinding stereotypes that separate us from ordinary men and women in Tehran today, the very clichés of mistrust that the negotiators in Geneva had to overcome in order to reach a solution to what seemed an intractable problem. Indeed, those negotiators may have been listening to Rumi when their positions seemed most conflicting and conflictive.
The exchange below between Uri Avneri and Rabbi Arthur Waskow reflects the complicated issues raised by ISIS and how to respond to its barbarous behavior. We at Tikkun believe in a nonviolent response, which will take longer but is ultimately more likely to last–a change in US and Western countries from their current strategy of domination to a strategy of generosity reflected in a Global Marshall Plan which could transform the way the world perceives the West and open the mind of even the most cynical to the possibility that love could triumph over fear, slowly melting away thousands of years of conditioning to the idea that only power over others gives us safety or security. . Both Uri Avneri and Arthur Waskow support that kind of approach in the long run, but here present shorter-run ideas that deserve to be discussed widely.–Rabbi Michael Lerner
Uri Avnery
September 12, 2015
The Real Menace
I AM AFRAID.
I am not ashamed to admit it.
Editor’s note: As a non-profit, Tikkun does not take stances on candidates or political parties during election periods, but our authors and readers are welcome to do so! Henry Giroux is one of the most creative theorists on the Left these days, so it is an honor to publish him here. Donald Trump and the Ghost of Totalitarianism
Henry A. Giroux
In the current historical moment in the United States, the emptying out of language is nourished by the assault on the civic imagination. One example of this can be found in the rise of Donald Trump on the political scene. Donald Trump’s popular appeal speaks to not just the boldness of what he says and the shock it provokes, but the inability to respond to shock with informed judgement rather than titillation.
Next Monday is Rosh Hashanah, and from Brooklyn to Boca Raton, Jewish families will come together to mark the New Year with lavish feasts and stilted conversations. No Jewish holiday ever goes by without a family argument and no Jewish grandchild is in any doubt about this year’s topic: the Iran nuclear deal. With a nationwide run on Prilosec and other excuses to skip this year’s holiday, anxiety in Jewish communities across the country is palpable. But there’s no need to worry—with a little preparation, you can survive the conversation with bubbe and leave her kvelling about her genius progeny. Although it isn’t Passover, if you want to convince her, you’ll need to have good answers to these four obvious questions about the agreement.
Native American Council Offers Amnesty to 240 Million Undocumented Whites
The Native American National Council will offer amnesty to the estimated 240 million illegal white immigrants living in the United States. At a meeting on Friday in Taos, New Mexico, Native American leaders weighed a handful of proposals about the future of the United State’s large, illegal European population. After a long debate, NANC decided to extend a road to citizenship for those without criminal records or contagious diseases. “We will give Europeans the option to apply for Native Citizenship,” explained Chief Sauti of the Nez Perce tribe. “To obtain legal status, each applicant must write a heartfelt apology for their ancestors’ crimes, pay an application fee of $5,000, and, if currently on any ancestral Native land, they must relinquish that land to NANC or pay the market price, which we decide.
Editor’s note: The poem below presents the most authentic understanding of the situation of the world’s refugees in the contemporary world. They are momentarily in the consciousness of the world’s humanity, but will too soon fade. People have momentarily been moved by the great suffering of these refugees, and particularly their children, but politely ignore the role that the US and other “advanced” industrial societies have played in creating the economic and political conditions which have led to the vast increase of refugees in the past twenty years. For the U.S., that responsibility includes both the economic devastation wrought in South and Central America, Africa and Asia by the trade agreements (championed by the Clintons and more recently by Obama) that destroyed subsistence farming and forced millions of people into the barrios and slums of the big cities where they were often forced to choose between armed opposition to ruling elites or selling their children into slavery or sexual exploitation rather than see them starve to death; and also the devastation created by the U.S. wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and drone strikes in Yemen all of which gave rise to the Islamic State of Iraq & Syris (ISIS) with its brutality now spreading through populations driven crazy by the violence that the US and its allies intensified in the Middle East. So while Americans sit around looking in shock at this situation, deploring the growing xenophobia that not only is growing in Europe but which is being played to by the Trump candidacy and other candidates for the Republic Presidential nomination, many wilfully ignore the role of our own country in creating the preconditions for this growing horror show.
Editor’s note: Henry Giroux is one of the most brilliant analysts of the humanly destructive impatct of global capitalism as it plays itself out not only in the economic sphere, but in every aspect of daily life. It is an honor for us that he writes for Tikkun and gives us permission to post on our website articles that he has published elsewhere. Whatever he addresses he manages to pull together a coherent and deeply insightful overview that illuminates and deepens our understanding of the world. So even if the ostensible topic of any given article may not interest you, as you read through his articles you will learn so much about the way to think about our world that it’s almost like being back in the very best college course you ever had!–Rabbi Michael Lerner
SEPTEMBER 2, 2015
Global Capitalism and the Culture of Mad Violence
by HENRY GIROUX
Mohsen Abdelmoumen: The concept of “disposability” frequently returns in your writing, whether speaking of youth, politics, the future, etc. Why do you insist on this theme?
Editor’s note: Noam Chomsky’s analysis (read below after reading this) is an important counter to the endless drum of US propaganda from both parties about the threat from Iran. So much self-deception is thrown at Americans that we are not to blame when even the best among us begins to repeat analyses that forget or obscure the actual role that the US plays in the world today, as Chomsky begins to outline (though he doesn’t really explore the more powerful distorting role of global capitalism, which is not to be blamed solely on the US). Unfortunately, Chomsky underplays the anti-Semitism that the Iranian mullahs have fanned in Iran. They may never have explicitly called for Israel’s physical destruction, but they had plenty of time to clarify what they’ve meant by what seems like code language with such destruction in mind – all they needed to do to eliminate what Chomsky considers an unfair charge would be to publicly affirm that they don’t intend or seek to eliminate the state that was created as a refuge for Jews. We atTikkunhave sent that request to Iranian leaders, but they haven’t responded.
Editor’s note: this strategy does not capture the strategic ideas we’ve develop in Tikkun and in The Left Hand of God book, in the NSP strategy paper “Yearing for a World of Love and Justice, we’ve developed at www.spiritualprogressives.org/covenant and in our trainings for spiritual progressives. Nevertheless, it is a strategy that has some serious thinking behind it, and that is very rare these days among secular progressive activists, so it deserves our attention.–Rabbi Michael Lerner
The Sum Strategem
by Zevin V. Cruz
“Zevin X. Cruz” <zevinxcruz@gmail.com>
“We’re not going to change the world one person at a time. We’re not going to clean up our ghettos one block at a time or save our national debt one dollar and one balanced budget at a time, or solve the crime problem in America one criminal at a time. It’s a nice fantasy, but that’s about all it is—a fantasy. “Economies of scale make a difference.
Throw the [Good] Book at Them: Changing the Conversation about Justice
by Rabbi Rachel Mikva
Romain Dukes says President Obama has given him his life back. Expecting to spend the rest of his years in prison after being convicted in 1997 of distribution and conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine, Dukes is among the forty-six individuals who recently had their sentences commuted. Jason Hernandez says the same thing; sentenced at age fifteen to life without parole for his part in a drug conspiracy, he’s been out since 2013 after the president commuted his sentence. Hernandez works as a welder (a trade he learned in prison), and mentors juvenile offenders at Café Momentum in Texas, eager to make a difference in the lives of these teens:
I hope one of these days when they ask the president, “What were some of your greatest decisions?” And when he names the Affordable Care Act and the other accomplishments that he has done, that he also says, “You know what? There’s also the Clemency Initiative and that one Mexican kid, named Jason Hernandez. I’m glad I let him out because he has done so much for the community.” That’s kind of how I live my life.
I Worked at AIPAC 6 Years…But Now It Shames Me As an American Jew
by M.J. Rosenberg
August 6, 2015 mjayrosenberg
President Obama’s speech at American University defending the Iran agreement against charges made by the Israeli government and its lobby in the United States (along with the lobby’s wholly owned subsidiaries in Congress) was, for me, the worst moment yet in my long history with the lobby in general and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in particular. I saw something I never expected to see, something that appalled and offended me more than anything the lobby has done before. I saw the President of the United States brought to the point where he felt it necessary to give a major foreign policy address defending his foreign policy against Netanyahu and AIPAC. Every charge Obama felt the need to rebut was a charge made by Netanyahu or the lobby. Obama himself conceded that when he noted that Israel is the only country in the world that opposes the Iran agreement.
Two apologies from Rabbi Lerner a minor one and a major one
1) The minor apology is that the mailing of the Summer issue of Tikkun was delayed by something going wrong at the printers. That issue should have been mailed in mid-July and instead is coming sometime in mid-August. So sorry. As you probably know, the print issue of the magazine is only available to subscribers and members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives and is not the same as the articles you find on line at tikkun.org or the Tikkun Daily blog. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do so now at that website.
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. President Obama referenced the failure of peace-oriented people to stop the disastrous war in Iraq and urged us to become visibly engaged in supporting this agreement, which he said would prevent the only other possible alternative for those who want a denuclearized Iran, namely a war with Iran. Of course, I had hoped that there would be a chance to engage directly with Obama, but he simply continued to do what he has done ever since we helped to elect him, namely talk to us but not with us. Still, many members of our Tikkun and NSP community tuned in for the talk and then sent their responses to me.
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.”