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Month: July 2012

  • Conspiracy and the Tides of History

     

    Allegedly this is a picture describing how the Polio vaccine is a US-Jewish conspiracy to annihilate all Muslims. It is from Pakistan where many friends of mine have told me of similar posters.  I would love someone to comment further on the veracity of this photo. The criminals who engage in this kind of behavior have some clear intentions, but what people may not realize is the origin of this.

    This is much older than people think. It has deep origins in the antisemitic Middle Ages. Jews were always associated with cutting edge medicine by dint of their professional pursuits and their own health and eating practices. Those who wanted their knowledge, who respected science, brought in Jews in large numbers, sometimes to Muslim societies who rescued Jews from persecution in Christian lands, sometimes to Christian societies. But those past and present who see knowledge as a threat to …

  • Give Pardes a chance – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper

    Gopin, who has been a primary adviser and occasional co-instructor, calls the center “revolutionary” in that it may be “the only place in the world [where] a Jewish center of higher learning [combines] advanced academic conflict resolution theory and practice with the principles of rabbinic approaches to mediation and conflict resolution, examining narratives as well as law, and merging that with training for practice.”

    Roth’s ancient inspirations are what he calls the “forgotten” Jewish role models of pursuing peace, including Aaron in the Torah, first-century rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakai, and individuals throughout history who were called in Jewish literature “pursuers of peace.”

    “Ben Zakai was known as a ‘rodeph shalom’ [pursuer of peace] – the third-century text said a person who makes peace does so not only between [neighbors], husband and wife, family and family, but also between city and city, government and government, and nation and nation,” said Roth. …

  • Marc Gopin: Anticipating the Syria of Tomorrow: Strategies to Decrease Violence Against Innocents

     

     

     

     

     

    Marc Gopin: Anticipating the Syria of Tomorrow: Strategies to Decrease Violence Against Innocents.

    My latest on Huffington Post. Here is an excerpt:

     

    2. The other critical factor now is working on the solidarity of the people of Syria, in all their diversity, with each other’s immediate needs and concerns. Any humanitarian or conflict management interventions that can lead to greater cooperation across religious lines, both inside Syria and outside Syria, will improve the likelihood of minimizing innocent deaths in the short run and the long run. This will create more bridges to build upon now in terms of immediate victims and will run into the future as the victims may start adding up for minority groups that are now in a more privileged position.…

  • Business that Unifies, Business that Divides

    Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas – The Washington Post.

    The reports demonstrating Bain and Romney’s deep involvement in aiding the steady demise of American jobs for poor people by shipping them overseas and making enormous profits is a tale in American conflict generation. A society first and foremost must be a based on a social contract between in its richest and poorest citizens that they will all do their share for the increased prosperity and welfare of the society. This creates social harmony, this unifies and it is the basis of the peaceful vision of capitalism that Adam Smith had which required a moral sense, intuitions of empathy and compassion that accompanied the profit motive.

    But this is nowhere to be found in the Wall Street of today which has no comprehension of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Bain and Romney symbolize this world …

  • The Travelers and the Truth: States with fewest Passports most Opposed to Obamacare | Informed Comment

    States with fewest Passports most Opposed to Obamacare | Informed Comment.

    Travel is and always has been one of the clearest forms of human enlightenment. Fantasy and illusion are best served by sedentary life, by immobility that allows the clever and the creative and the unscrupulous to fool the majority through fears and nightmares. But the traveler walks over the hill, and then walks back, and simply says, “But it is not true over there. What you are saying is not true over the hill.” An then he is condemned and stoned by those whose lies he has challenged. But the traveler’s challenge has ignited the imaginations and curiosity of ten more people. The traveler is the embodiment of human curiosity, of discovery, of science in its deepest sense.…

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