Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/politics__society/us_politics/page/31/)
In its short but meteoric rise to relevance in the American Jewish community, J Street has attempted to expand the Jewish American peace camp by taking nuanced positions and poaching supporters from traditional Jewish organizations like AIPAC. But there is a major discrepancy between J Street’s repeated call for “bold and creative action” in pursuit of a two-state solution and its position paper defending the U.S. veto.
Who can defend health insurance companies? There is no business case, no health care case, no moral case to support their ongoing existence. They make their profits by avoiding taking care of sick people — by refusing to issue policies, canceling policies, or denying payment. The health insurance industry must go.
Obama and UN: Recognize Palestine AND Re-affirm Israel’s Right to Exist as a Jewish State
American and Israeli diplomats acknowledge that they do not have the votes to prevent the General Assembly of the United Nations from recognizing Palestine and granting it some of the rights of member states. The U.S. can block full membership only by exercising its veto in the Security Council, an act likely to intensify hatred of the U.S. in many countries around the world. A far wiser strategy is for the U.S. (even better, with Israel) to introduce a resolution to the Security Council providing full membership in the U.N. to Palestine while simultaneously reaffirming Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Both sides win. Israel will feel less isolated, and Palestinians will get full instead of the only partial and largely symbolic membership in the U.N. it could get from the General Assembly once the U.S. vetoes membership in a Security Council resolution.
Over the last ten years, New York firefighters have been lionized, demonized, and everything in between. Often the reality of the vulnerable, emotional individuals under the fire hats gets lost. Time and again, firefighters’ stories have been sensationalized by the media or appropriated by conservative groups to bolster calls for war. But a deeper look at the experience of New York City firefighters brings us back to a core truth: that we are all vulnerable, scared, hurting people, and what we need to heal is not violence but a renewed sense of our interconnection.
Published in the New York Times by Niel MacFarquhar:
UNITED NATIONS — The global economy faces a decade-long
stagnation because governments are pursuing deficit cuts
and other austerity measures rather than providing the
needed stimulus packages, said a United Nations economic
report released Tuesday. Instead of new regulation of the financial system to
address the problems that helped bring on the recession in
2007-8, governments in the United States and Europe are
trying to woo the very speculators who helped cause the
problem, said the report by the Geneva-based United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development, which is
known by its acronym, Unctad. “Those who support fiscal tightening argue that it is
indispensable for restoring the confidence of financial
markets, which is perceived as key to economic recovery,”
the report said. “This is despite the almost universal recognition that the
crisis was the result of financial market failure in the
first place.” Read the rest of the article here.
Who Funds All The Muslim-Baiting? by M.J.Rosenberg
It has been just about a decade since Islamophobia exploded in this country. That was of moment that the World Trade Center and Pentagon were hit by al Qaeda terrorists. It existed prior to 9/11, but the losses that day and the general terror it inflicted upon this country made many, many Americans much more wary of Arabs and, fairly quickly, fearful of the religion the terrorists professed. The first sign that 9/11 would be exploited to advance various agendas came from Binyamin Netanyahu, who was quoted in the New York Times as saying the attacks would be good for Israel:
Asked tonight [September 11, 2001] what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, replied, ”It’s very good.” Then he edited himself: ”Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.” He predicted that the attack would ”strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.”
We at Tikkun have been saying for the past 3 years what former Sec. of Labor and economist Robert Reich says below and what Paul Krugman has been saying for the past 2 years: there is no serious budget crisis. Instead, we have an employment and housing crisis. It is true, as Robert Reich says below, that the Republicans have been running with this lie for the past several years in order to prevent the Democrats, when they had the majority in both houses of Congress, and the presidency, 2009-2010, from doing what the country needed: a massive Work Progress Administration (WPA) employment program coupled with a freeze on mortgage foreclosures and a law requiring the banks to renegotiate mortgage interests to what it was when the mortgage was first offered to the buyers. But Reich plays down the huge culpability of Obama and his economic advisors (who could have been Reich and Krugman, and no Republican forced Obama to go with the pro-corporate advisors he actually chose form the start).
Democracy, in the American tradition, has been defined by a simple morality: We Americans care about our fellow citizens, we act on that care and build trust, and we do our best not just for ourselves, our families, and our friends and neighbors, but for our country, for each other, for people we have never seen and never will see. American Democracy has, over our history, called upon citizens to share an equal responsibility to work together to secure a safe and prosperous future for their families and nation. This is the central work of our democracy and it is a public enterprise. This, the American Dream, is the dream of a functioning democracy. Public refers to people, acting together to provide what we all depend on: roads and bridges, public buildings and parks, a system of education, a strong economic system, a system of law and order with a fair and effective judiciary, dams, sewers, and a power grid, agencies to monitor disease, weather, food safety, clean air and water, and on and on.
Editor’s Note: Leonardo Boff is a noted South American liberation theologian. Is the Crisis of Capitalism Terminal? Leonardo Boff*
I believe the present crisis of capitalism is more than cyclical and structural. It is terminal. Are we seeing the end of the genius of capitalism, of always being able to adapt to any circumstance?
The founding mothers of the Women’s Liberation Movement were socialists. We were activists who came from committees against the war in Vietnam. We believed that since we were at the bottom of the wage scale, if we demanded an equal chance for all women, we would rise and bring everyone with us to create an America with full equality for all. Instead, we helped to create near equality for women within a system of ever greater class inequality. A new kind of movement is clearly needed to re-energize our struggles for equality and for a society that values the happiness of all over the power or profits of a few.
The United States of America is the biggest and worst terrorist nation of the world. And most Americans approve enthusiastically. Those two statements need careful corroboration. They need a careful reading of history.
The White House and congressional leaders are in final negotiations to raise the debt ceiling. Call your senators through our special toll-free number (1-800-826-3688) and ask them to urge Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to create a circle of protection around funding for programs for hungry and poor people in the United States and abroad in the bill to raise the debt ceiling.
“Life in Just Peace,” the joint statement on liberation theology reprinted in full within Ulrich Duchrow’s article “A European Revival of Liberation Theology” (Tikkun, Winter 2011), is quite commendable but, like other declarations made by religious leaders, it runs the risk of remaining “on high” instead of fueling the struggles of ordinary people. In the interest of broadening this discussion in Tikkun I’d like to offer a response.
The Supreme Court’s June 27 narrow 5-4 decision called McComish v. Bennett continues the Roberts Court’s retreat on fairness in elections, striking down trigger provisions that allowed publicly financed candidates in Arizona to receive additional funds for their campaigns when their spending was outstripped by their privately financed opponents.
Make July 4 INTER-DEPENDENCE DAY! Do July 4 with a community of people who are not into the reactionary nationalist rah-rah, but into seriously thinking about and celebrating what is good in America! If you happen to be in the Bay Area July 4, come to the Tikkun, NSP, Beyt Tikkun picnic! If not, you can read and utilize in any way you can our guide to ideas to share at a picnic or July 4th celebration of your own, no matter how small! Just go to: https://www.tikkun.org/newsite/an-interdependence-day-celebration-for-july-4.