Dealing with Psychopaths

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Editor’s note: I have my doubts about parts of this analysis: 1. I doubt if the research he cites can be assumed to hold cross cultures, so I think his numbers are very exaggerated 2. I think there is a big danger in labeling people whose behavior we believe to be ethically offensives as “psychopaths” and 3. I dont know that this gives us much basis for a respectful inervention, but might increase the already strong elitism among many on the Left who now would have a psychologically reductive term to dismiss people with whom we disagree. Still, I think that this piece deserves our attention, even if only to use as a way of showing the limitations of dismissive discourses on the Left.

Letter to Occupy

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Occupy is not over, but Stage Two has not yet come together. I will now, audaciously, suggest a Stage Two that I am convinced would rock the world.

American Mass Murder: A Toxic Cultural Brew

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Whatever psychological diagnosis ultimately gets pinned to him, Holmes and the act that will forever define him—as he hoped it would—were the products of a peculiarly American set of cultural experiences, values, and motivation, which hold the key to understanding how and the United States seems to produce such a disproportionate number of people who engage in acts of seemingly senseless mass murder.

Sociopaths Rule

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A fundamental examination of the nature of our economy and its consequences is long overdue, and widespread distribution of Heist could go a long way toward making this happen.

Crossing Borders, Planting Olive Trees

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Joshua Davis has played music in South American rainforests, on the promenade in Havana, in old mining towns in Michigan, and beyond. But Tuwani, a village in the Palestinian West Bank, tested his comfort level perhaps more than any previous gig.

Languages of Liturgy and Occupation

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Living in Ramallah has meant that I must see my Judaism differently. It means I sometimes have to turn myself inside out. I see our religious symbols differently. I experience Hebrew differently. I hear Hebrew as the five million Palestinians who live here do: not as a spiritual language but a language of military occupation.

SF Jewish Film Festival Opening–Go To It This Week

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What’s more Jewish than bagels, lox, and schmear? Film! At least, so says the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), which invited viewers into and beyond the stereotypes at its Opening Night festivities Thursday evening in San Francisco. A lively and boisterous crowd packed the Castro Theater, kicking off SFJFF’s thirty-second year with the world premiere screening of Roberta Grossman’s comic documentary Hava Nagila (the Movie).

Has Judaism Been Stolen by Right-Wingers?

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Temperatures have been increasing every decade since the 1970s, producing increasingly severe storms, floods, wildfires, areas of drought, and other signs of climate change. Yet, an alarming percentage of Jews, especially among the Orthodox, still believe that climate change is nothing more than “liberal politics.”