Politics & Society

Countdown to Zero: A Compelling Film with a Critical Message

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Original to Tikkun:
by Jonathan Granoff and Rhianna Tyson Kreger
A few years ago, Lawrence Bender and Jeffrey Skoll set out to make a new documentary about nuclear weapons, a film which would act as a wake up call to the imperative of nuclear abolition, just as their last project, An Inconvenient Truth, galvanized public discourse – and action – surrounding climate change. Teamed up with policy expert Bruce Blair and Writer-Director Lucy Walker (Devil’s Playground, Blindsight) they created the newly released Countdown to Zero, which unequivocally argues that, whether by accident, malicious intent of “terrorists” or as a result of failed diplomacy, nuclear weapons pose an unacceptable risk and must be eliminated. While scores of arms control and disarmament civil society groups are deeply inspired by the mass consciousness-raising and mobilization opportunity the film presents, many disarmament activists are vocally disappointed with the film. They are concerned that the film overemphasizes the hazard of sub-state actors acquiring these weapons of terror and places insufficient responsibility upon countries like the US and Russia for their continued reliance on– and dangerous posture of– nuclear weapons. Countdown to Zero makes the case for abolition without employing the moral arguments eloquently posited by luminaries such as Albert Schweitzer, or Cold Warrior George Kennan, who once stated:
The readiness to use nuclear weapons against other human beings – against people we do not know, whom we have never seen, and whose guilt or innocence is not for us to establish – and, in doing so, to place in jeopardy the natural structure upon which all civilization rests, as though the safety and perceived interests of our own generation were more important than everything that has taken place or could take place in civilization: this is nothing less than a presumption, a blasphemy, an indignity- an indignity of monstrous dimensions – offered to God!

Politics & Society

Vindication for Judge Goldstone

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Rabbi Brian Walt is the Executive Director of Rabbis for Human Rights North America and was the founding Rabbi of JRF Congregation Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia, PA. He sent us this post for Tikkun Daily, from his own blog today. Goldstone’s report and the anger directed at him has been a major issue for us: e.g., see Michael Lerner’s interview with Goldstone. On Rabbinic Integrity: “Principles, truth and justice before ethnic or group loyalty”
By Rabbi Brian Walt
Now that the official Israeli response has confirmed several of the most shocking events described in the Goldstone report, Allister Sparks, a prominent South African journalist, has publicly challenged members of the South African Jewish community and Rabbi Warren Goldstein, the Chief Rabbi of South Africa, in particular, to apologize for their public attack on Judge Goldstone. (The American Jewish leadership and community was as vicious in its attack on Judge Goldstone.)
Israel’s report confirms several of the egregious moral violations described in the Report including a lethal attack on a mosque during a prayer service, on a house where a family with 100 members was hiding on the orders of Israel Defense Force, and the killing of a Palestinian holding a white flag by an Israeli marksmen.

Inter-Culturalism

When The Verdict Comes…

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By Josh Healey

Here in Oakland, we are anxiously awaiting the verdict in the trial of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle’s murder of the unarmed Oscar Grant. The murder, which was captured on video by bystanders and seen on Youtube by millions of people, sparked massive protests and militant actions around Oakland last year – and has the potential to generate further unrest depending on the jury’s decision. The verdict could come down as early as today, and there’s a lot of questions in the air about what’s going to happen. I can’t say for sure what my own reaction will be. Still, I decided I need to make a list of personal principles that I’d hold myself to, no matter what the decision is.

art

Mark Twain’s Early Protest against the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

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We are delighted to start presenting occasional one-off posts by guest authors with this fine essay by Cynthia Wachtell, author of War No More: The Antiwar Impulse in American Literature, 1861-1914. By Cynthia Wachtell
I sometimes wonder what Mark Twain would make of America’s many modern wars. This year marks the centenary of Twain’s death, which means he died before World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War, and our current contretemps in Iraq and Afghanistan. Oh what a century he missed! Of course, Twain wrote the American classics Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, but he also spilled a lot of ink about war.