SEARCH RESULTS

https://www.coldtype.net/Assets.07/Essays/0807.Pilger.Chicago.pdf

The Origins of Zionism: A Historical Perspective The emergence of Zionism is a complex narrative rooted in the historical, political, and social contexts of late 19th- and early 20th-century Europe. At its core, Zionism was a national movement seeking to establish a Jewish homeland, primarily in Palestine. A combination of religious longing, antisemitic persecution, and nationalist aspirations drove it. Historical Context and Biblical Connections The historical claim to the land was deeply intertwined with biblical narratives. Traditionally, Jews had maintained a connection to the region, with the phrase "Next year in Jerusalem" symbolizing a centuries-old dream of return. As Herzl noted, "For two thousand years, the revival of the Jewish state in Palestine had been the passion" (Gilbert, 186). However, scholars like Shlomo Sand argue that this historical narrative is more complex, questioning the notion of a unified Jewish nation in ancient times. Theodor Herzl and the Birth of Modern Zionism Theodor Herzl emerged as the pivotal figure in modern Zionism despite having a relatively superficial knowledge of Judaism. The Dreyfus trial in France became a transformative moment, leading Herzl to view the "Jewish question" as a political issue rather than a religious or economic one. As Shapira describes, Herzl was the first to project the Jewish question as an international problem (Shapira, 16). Herzl's vision was audacious and often met with skepticism. He acknowledged this, stating, "I know it sounds mad; and at the beginning, I shall be called mad more than once - until the truth of what I am saying is recognized in all its shattering force" (Herzl, 43). His approach was strategic, seeking support from various European powers, including initially considering alternatives like Uganda or Argentina. Colonial Dimensions and Complexity Critically, Zionism was not a simple nationalist movement but had significant colonial undertones. As Rashid Khalidi notes, Zionism was essentially a "colonial national movement" that strategically utilized the Bible to gain support from Christian Britain and America (Khalidi, 9). The movement sought to establish a Jewish presence in Palestine, which was then occupied by various ethnic and racial groups. Challenges and Resistance The Zionist movement faced numerous challenges. Wealthy Jewish elites like the Rothschilds were skeptical, viewing Herzl's plans as unrealistic. The Arab population in Palestine strongly resisted the movement, refusing to recognize any Jewish historical connection to the land beyond those who had arrived before the Balfour Declaration (Shapira, 82). Ideological Transformation Zionism fundamentally transformed Jewish identity. Traditionally, Eretz Israel was viewed as a place of holy pilgrimage, not a secular state. Zionist thinkers secularized and nationalized Judaism, reimagining Palestine as their nationalist cradle. Interestingly, they often perceived the land as "empty," essentially rendering the native Palestinian population invisible (Herzl, 39). International Support and Challenges The movement gained international traction through strategic diplomacy. The Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations mandate provided crucial political support. By 1923, Hebrew was recognized as an official language alongside English and Arabic, symbolizing the emerging Jewish national identity. Conclusion Zionism represented a complex response to antisemitism, a desire for national self-determination, and a reimagining of Jewish identity. It was simultaneously a movement of hope, colonization, resistance, and transformation. As Herzl envisioned, it sought to provide Jews with "a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation" (Herzl, 110). The narrative of Zionism is not a simple story of return but a multifaceted historical process involving political maneuvering, cultural reinvention, and profound societal challenges.

The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War, published in 2021 by Craig Whitlock, opens with a prescient quote from Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black about the necessity of "a free and unrestrained press" in preventing government deception. This theme of truth versus official narrative runs throughout the work, beginning with Whitlock's discovery in the summer of 2016 of interviews conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). These interviews revealed deep-seated frustrations among war participants and exposed a pattern of deliberate misrepresentation that would define America's longest war. The fundamental failures of the Afghanistan War stemmed from a profound lack of strategic coherence. As one British general noted, forces were given "a lot of tactics instead of a cohesive long-term strategy." This assessment was echoed by U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute's stark admission: "We didn't have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking." While Congress largely ignored the war, military leaders like General Peter Pace mistakenly believed the primary failure lay in not convincing the American people that the war would take decades—a perspective that ignored the fundamental question of whether the war should have occurred. Critical misunderstandings of local dynamics plagued the United States' approach to Afghanistan. American forces failed to differentiate between Taliban and al-Qaeda, often missing that much of the conflict was tribal rather than ideological. They violated Afghan customs of conflict resolution and, crucially, rejected opportunities for negotiation with the Taliban in December 2001—a decision that one official believed extended what could have been a brief conflict into a decades-long quagmire. The military's cultural blindness was further exemplified by their lack of Pashto-speaking personnel, choosing instead to train soldiers in Arabic, a language foreign to Afghanistan. The nation-building effort reflected a profound misunderstanding of Afghan society. In Bonn, Germany, in 2001, rather than allowing Afghans to follow their traditional governance systems, the Bush Administration imposed an American-style constitutional democracy. This decision to concentrate power in a presidential role violated Afghan tribal customs and attempted to centralize authority in a historically decentralized society. Richard Boucher, former State Department chief spokesman, later admitted, "The only time this country has worked properly was when it was a floating pool of tribes and warlords presided over by someone who had a certain eminence." The development of Afghan security forces similarly reflected American hubris. The U.S. created an Afghan army in its image, expecting illiterate recruits to master complex Western military systems and PowerPoint presentations. They imposed Western-style police forces, ignoring that Afghans traditionally resolved conflicts through village elders rather than formal law enforcement. These forces were severely under-resourced compared to their Taliban opponents, with Afghan recruits earning merely $2.50 a day to defend their government. Contradictory approaches to aid and resources marked the administration of the war effort. The Bush Administration provided insufficient aid, while the Obama Administration later offered more than Afghanistan could effectively absorb. Throughout, the project was undermined by what Whitlock describes as "hubris, incompetence, bureaucratic infighting and haphazard planning." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's simplified approach of "killing bad guys" and the Pentagon's domination of decision-making with "unrivaled political clout" further complicated efforts at developing effective policies. The disconnect between reality and the official narrative became increasingly stark as the war progressed. In 2003, Rumsfeld claimed Afghanistan was "secure" when 95% of American casualties had yet to occur. President Bush declared "the Taliban no longer exists" while the organization was actively regrouping in Pakistan. The complexity of the conflict—involving drug dealers, militias, and centuries-old tribal conflicts—was reduced to simplified narratives that failed to capture the reality on the ground. The war's later years, particularly 2017-2019, saw increasingly desperate attempts to demonstrate progress. The deployment of the massive MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) failed to achieve strategic objectives, and when data showed Taliban expansion, military leaders simply changed their metrics rather than confront reality. The peace process, finally authorized under Trump in 2018, included Taliban negotiators who had spent twelve years detained in Guantanamo Bay—a stark illustration of the war's complex ironies. Throughout the conflict, the United States repeated many of the same mistakes made in Vietnam, particularly in its approach to counterinsurgency and its misunderstanding of local time perspectives. One Taliban fighter noted, "You have all the clocks, but we have all the time." This fundamental misalignment of attitudes and expectations characterized much of the war effort. The Afghanistan Papers reveal how systematic failures to learn from historical precedents, combined with a pattern of public deception and internal confusion, led to America's longest war becoming one of its most costly failures. The work serves as a crucial reminder of the importance of cultural understanding, strategic clarity, and honest public discourse in military operations. As the United States continues to engage globally, the lessons from this conflict—particularly about the limits of military power and the importance of understanding local contexts—remain vitally relevant.

“This is much worse than 2016 . . . Because I really did think we were better than this.” In my opinion, it is worse because he won the popular vote and the Electoral College. Mary Trump’s latter comments are valid. However, Harris ran a weak campaign. She supported Biden’s policies, especially on Gaza, which is unforgivable. Corporate media shares responsibility. “Time and time again, when the American people needed clarity and reasoned analysis, we got false equivalence and normalization.” If true, the American people rely too much on established media and don’t take the responsibility to look for alternatives. Dearborn, Michigan, gave Jill Stein 18% of their vote.  “His victory over Vice President Kamala Harris was decisive, broad, and dependent on voters from core Democratic constituencies.” Michael C. Bender, Katie Glueck, Ruth Igielnik, and Jennifer Medina. New York Times  Nov. 6, 2024. Judging by the other articles I am synthesizing, I conclude that Americans are selfish and dumb. Shirley Leung, a Boston Globe columnist, offered the perfect analysis of the 2024 presidential election. “I thought women would save us from another Trump presidency. I was wrong.” November 7, 2024 “Women came out to elect Kamala Harris, but not enough of them as economic concerns outweighed abortion rights and worries about Trump’s demeanor.” “More than half of white women backed Trump, compared to 45 percent for Harris, according to a CNN exit poll.” “I don’t get it. . . . voters are OK with returning to power a convicted felon who’s threatening to turn our 248-year-old democracy into an autocracy.” Abortion rights were lost to “Trump’s strong-man politics and resentment over high prices at the grocery store. Voters in Arizona, Nevada, Missouri, and Montana “backed abortion access” yet also voted for Trump, who opposed abortion. A CNN exit poll found voters were concerned with “the state of democracy, followed by the economy, and then abortion and immigration. That means ideology and inflation shaped how people cast their ballots, more so than reproductive rights.” “Economic concerns . . . outweighed . . . abortion.” “Inflation is political dynamite.” “But Trump’s message seems to have resonated with men 18-44 who voted for him in greater numbers than in 2020, according to the AP.” “Trump . . . performed better with Black and Latino voters of any Republican in recent history.” “The sexism and racism that pervade this country that would sooner elect a convicted felon than elevate a female vice president to the Oval Office.” “Jane Rayburn, a Democratic pollster, and partner at EMC Research, a national opinion research firm. The entire country shifted right . . . whether it’s white women or Latinos . . . the shifts were ubiquitous.” “Women seem to prioritize the same thing men do: a better economy.” VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS “I didn’t think Vice President Harris could have run a better, more professional, more inspiring campaign. . . . too many people refused to buy into her message of hope and unity. Too many people want what Donald Trump has to offer them. It will not serve them well. . . . it will be worse for the most vulnerable among us.” Mary Trump. Waking Up to the End of America. marytrump@substack.com  November 6, 2024 “The voters I spent time with were energized by the president-elect’s messages. By contrast, Harris had no clear vision and no shared rage at the state of the country.” “Just a quarter of Americans are happy with the way things are going in their country.”  In contrast, Harris said she wouldn’t change any of Biden’s policies. Owen Jones. “I’ve been on the road speaking to the U.S. right.” The Guardian. Nov. 6, 2024. “And Harris refused to campaign with Bernie Sanders, but she campaigned . . . with Liz Cheney.” “This is the collapse of the Democratic Party”: Ralph Nader on Roots of Trump’s Win Over Harris.” democracynow.org   Nov. 6, 2024 “Instead, Harris made the preservation of democracy the key dividing line. For some voters, this was either too abstract, or they simply didn’t care.” Owen Jones. “I’ve been on the road speaking to the U.S. right.” The Guardian. Nov. 6, 2024. Harris said she would “end corporate price gouging, lower housing costs, cut middle-class taxes, and protect Social Security and Medicare.” Carl Gibson. “Dems had an ‘economic populist’ message’ but voters utterly indifferent’: columnist. alternet.org  Nov. 9, 2024 Kshama Sawant - As the Seattle socialist said, Harris would not have been selected to replace Biden if she had challenged his views. Professor of African American Studies at Emory University Carol Anderson said, “The Confederacy Won.” Harris explicitly explained her policies: “So the language that she needs to explain her policies is hokum. . . . we’re looking at the misogyny and the racism.” DemocracyNow.org  Nov. 6, 2024 DEMOCRATIC PARTY A Latino Democrat in Allentown, Pa., Voted for Trump in this election. He believes the Democrats pander to people while lying to your face. “They get in office, and they literally do nothing for you.” Bender, Glueck, Igielnik, and Medina. New York Times Nov. 6, 2024. Why does this person and all of the others with similar points of view think Trump cares about them? Look at his history. Democrats enabled Trump's victory. Owen Jones. “I’ve been on the road speaking to the U.S. right.” The Guardian. Nov. 6, 2024. “The Democrats might point to inflation - which peaked at 9.1 % in June 2022 - having declined to 2.4 % as a positive. But that doesn’t mean prices have fallen back; it just means they are rising more slowly, after having surged higher. . . . two-thirds of Americans believe the condition of the nation’s economy is poor or not good.” Owen Jones. “I’ve been on the road speaking to the U.S. right.” The Guardian. Nov. 6, 2024. I disagree that the Democrats espoused populism, but let’s see where Gibson takes this. Carl Gibson. “Dems had an ‘economic populist’ message’ but voters utterly indifferent’: columnist. alternet.org  Nov. 9, 2024 “Linda Sensor, Palestinian American Muslim organizer . . . the Democratic Party literally marginalized Arab Americans, Palestinian Muslim Americans voters.” “Linda Sarsour: Harris’ Embrace of Pro-Israel Policies at Odds with Democratic Base .”  democracynow.org  Nov. 6, 2024. “Somebody should ask the democratic party: how much money did you invest in Black and Brown-led organizations who do get-out-the-vote efforts, who engage and build power locally in communities?” The Democrats ignored the grassroots. “Linda Sarsour: Harris’ Embrace of Pro-Israel Policies at Odds with Democratic Base .”  democracynow.org  Nov. 6, 2024. “Keeanga-Yamahatta Taylor, a professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, says the blame lies squarely on the Harris campaign, which refused to differentiate itself from an unpopular incumbent President Joe Biden. The Democratic Party downplayed its base, targeted the center, and reached Republicans. . . . All of the barometers that we use to measure the mood of the country have really been in decline. . . . And I think that it has been largely dismissed.” “Keeanga-Yamahatta Taylor: Democrats Demobilized Their Base: A Movement Is Now Needed to Oppose Trump.” democracynow.org  Nov. 6, 2024 The Democrats demobilized young voters and grassroots organizers. “This is the collapse of the Democratic Party”: Ralph Nader on Roots of Trump’s Win Over Harris.” democracynow.org   Nov. 6, 2024 “The problem here is the leadership of the Democratic Party.” Nichols criticizes potential Democratic attempts “to work with this administration.” democracynow.org  John Nichols, National Affairs correspondent for TheNation “The Democrats abandoned half the country to the red states.” Beginning in 1979 when the Democrats “started getting corporate cash in 1979. . . . That blurred their differences from the New Deal-type Democrats to the corporate Democrats. . . . They abandoned public media. Basically, they abandoned radio to the Rush Limbaughs and created the Reagan Democrats. Don’t agree Reagan dems began earlier; And then they never learn from their mistakes.” One sentence criticisms of Trump are not enough. You have to be specific about the obscene control corporations have in America, such as “denial of healthcare benefits. . . . a living wage. . . . reversing a tax system. . . . They didn’t know how to rebut Trump on immigration.” The Democrats demobilized young voters and grassroots organizers. The Democrats “spent a lot of money attacking the Green Party, the tiny Green Party, instead of listening to William Barber . . . Look, there’s 80 million people who aren’t going to vote. . . . If you get 15% of low-wage workers who aren’t voting . . . the Democrats would have won.” “This is the collapse of the Democratic Party”: Ralph Nader on Roots of Trump’s Win Over Harris.” democracynow.org   Nov. 6, 2024 Forget the Democrats. He also describes the Green Party as navel-gazers. If Ralph Nader criticizes the Greens to such an extent, there’s a problem. Black Lives Matter, the Sunrise Movement, and other movements must get together. THE MINORITY VOTERS Yale professor Daniel HoSang has researched “the rise of right-wing political attitudes among minority groups.” The election results challenge the foundations of racial liberalism that have been dominant since the civil rights movement.” Bender, Glueck, Igielnik, and Medina. New York Times  Nov. 6, 2024. Asian Americans “Asian American voters . . . also appeared to have drifted away from Democrats . . . signs that many Democrats simply failed to show up in key party strongholds.” Bender, Glueck, Igielnik, and Medina. New York Times  Nov. 6, 2024. African-Americans “Black counties, with no more than 15,000 people, shifted toward Mr. Trump. The Trump campaign celebrated a victory in Baldwin County, Ga., where 42 percent of the population is Black. Republicans had not won the county for decades. . . . Mr. Trump’s gains with Black and Latino voters were driven heavily by those without a college degree.” Bender, Glueck, Igielnik, and Medina. New York Times  Nov. 6, 2024. Black voters for Trump jumped from 8% to 22%. Bernard Debusmann Jr., Madeleine Halpert, and Mike Wendling. BBC.com  Nov. 7, 2024 Arab-Americans Arabs have been described as among the most highly educated people in the world. In Michigan, they refused to support Joe Biden in the primary but supported Donald Trump, another Zionist, in the general election. Thousands of Dearborn residents voted for Trump.  Arab-Americans were upset at Kamala Harris’ refusal to allow Palestinian-Americans to speak at the Democratic National Convention” and for not calling for a partial arms embargo on Israel.” Another Arab-American said Harris had no plan, demonstrating a “lack of leadership and weakness.” They believed Trump when he said, “I will bring peace.” One said, “he was fed up with Mr. Biden’s support of Israel and Ukraine. . . . Not making a clear break with Mr. Biden . . . made Ms. Harris resoundingly unpopular in Dearborn. . . . Voters backing Mr. Trump said they wanted to give him a chance to rein in wars across the world and bring peace to the Middle East.” Hamed Aleaziz. “For Many Arab Americans in Dearborn, Trump Made the Case for Their Votes.” Nov. 6, 2024  This is the man who supports Netanyahu to the hilt and wants war with Iran just as Bibi does. “Many voters brushed aside comments Mr. Trump has made that were critical of Muslims, and some of them cited his willingness to visit Dearborn and bring prominent Muslim leaders onstage at a recent campaign rally as evidence of an olive branch. . . . Trump’s restrictions on migration from some Muslim-majority countries . . . that didn’t shake his support.” Hamed Aleaziz. “For Many Arab Americans in Dearborn, Trump Made the Case for Their Votes.” Nov. 6, 2024 “Again, Donald Trump engaged in outreach in the Muslim American community. He went and visited mosques. He met with religious leaders. . . . They filled in a gap that was left by the Democratic Party.” “Linda Sarsour: Harris’ Embrace of Pro-Israel Policies at Odds with Democratic Base .”  democracynow.org  Nov. 6, 2024. Dearborn voted for Trump. One person said, “I think he’s got a better relationship with leaders internationally, and I think he will definitely do a better job in reining in the Israeli terror.” “In Dearborn, Arab Americans for Trump celebrate his victory. . . . A former researcher at Harvard University . . . swung to Trump over the Gaza War.” “In Dearborn, Arab Americans for Trump celebrate his victory.” middleeasteye.com  Nov. 7, 2024 People cringed at Biden giving Netanyahu “carte blanche” in Gaza. Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan, refused to vote for Kamala Harris over complicity in genocide.” Mehdi Hasan Latino vote “The Republican president-elect showed strength with the white working-class voters who first propelled him to the White House in 2016 while racking up huge support from Latino voters and putting in a better-than-expected performance among younger Americans, especially men. . . . 14 percentage-point bump compared to the 2020 election, according to exit polls. . . . Exit polls suggested Latinos in Pennsylvania amounted to about 5% of the total vote. Trump garnered 42% of that vote, compared to 27% when he ran against Joe Biden in 2020. . . . It’s really simple. We liked the way things were four years ago,” said a Pennsylvania Puerto Rican. Trump’s views on family values were cited as one reason. Another reason was inflation. Bernard Debusmann Jr., Madeleine Halpert, and Mike Wendling. BBC.com  Nov. 7, 2024 Also, Latinos liked Trump’s immigration policies. “Nationally, Hispanic-majority counties on average shifted toward Mr. Trump by ten percentage points.” In Yuma County, Arizona, “Mr. Trump is on track to win by nearly 30 percentage points.” Polling showed that about one-third of Latino voters supported his policies for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. . . . Nationally, Hispanic-majority counties on average shifted toward Mr. Trump by ten percentage points.” Michael C. Bender, Katie Glueck, Ruth Igielnik, and Jennifer Medina. New York Times Nov. 6, 2024. THE ECONOMY Gibson recounts MSNBC columnist Michael A. Cohen, who wrote, “Democrats actually had the wind at their backs when it came to the economy. He noted that Joe Biden added 16 million jobs during his tenure, oversaw a significant increase in real (inflation-adjusted) wages, get, got inflation back down to 2018 levels, and canceled more than $175 billion in federal student debt. . . . The Bipartisan Infrastructure law (which spent more than $1 trillion on improving roads, bridges, airports and expanding rural broadband internet access), the CHIPS and Science Act (which created roughly 115,000 new manufacturing jobs in the semiconductor industry), and the Inflations Reduction Act (which made billions of dollars in investments in the renewable energy sector). Cohen opines that this should have made Democrats the obvious choice for voters who said they were motivated by economic issues, even though voters were ultimately unmoved.” Cohen continued, “The GOP’s attention to the white working is overwhelmingly symbolic. They offer nothing substantive on policy. They oppose expanding health care access or raising the minimum wage.” Carl Gibson. “Dems had an ‘economic populist’ message’ but voters utterly indifferent’: columnist. alternet.org  Nov. 9, 2024 Arab Americans “believed Mr. Trump was better on the economy.” “Lots of people in this country are in crisis. . . . exit polls . . . a total washout with working-class voters . . . people making under $100,000 went to Trump. . . . rise in homelessness, historic rise . . . Rent is 20% higher today than it was in 2020. Hunger, hunger insecurity on the rise . . . Americans took on $17 trillion in personal debt. And Kamala Harris had very little to say about that. The Republicans don’t have answers. And so Blacks and Latinos thumb their noses at Harris. democracynow.org  Georgetown University Constitutional Law Professor Michelle Goodwin. Nov. 6, 2024 CONTRADICTIONS “Cohen pointed out that in the ruby-red state of Missouri, progressive economic policies were incredibly popular with voters in the Show Me State. Not only did a ballot question on abortion succeed by a 58-42 margin, but a referendum on paid sick leave and raising the minimum wage also passed with a comfortable margin. Still, only 40% of voters cast their ballots for Harris. Carl Gibson. “Dems had an ‘economic populist’ message’ but voters utterly indifferent’: columnist. alternet.org  Nov. 9, 2024 Arab Americans supported Trump because he would bring peace to the Middle East and end wars. Mehdi Hasan . In the words of Robert Reich, rubbish.  IMMIGRATION Cohen argues that Trump’s scapegoating of “undocumented immigrants for America’s problems.” Carl Gibson. “Dems had an ‘economic populist’ message’ but voters utterly indifferent’: columnist. alternet.org  Nov. 9, 2024 Illegal immigrants support Trump because he will stop other unlawful immigrants so that the first illegal immigrants can get jobs. Mehdi Hasan RACISM He advocated racism and xenophobia hatred. “You’re seeing the backlash to what they call great . . . backlash to what they fear was the great replacement. . . . the last stand of white supremacy.” Professor of African American Studies at Emory University Carol Anderson said, “The Confederacy Won.” DemocracyNow.org  Nov. 6, 2024 “The election results were based on race, it paints a picture of the United States.” Georgetown University Constitutional Law Professor Michelle Goodwin. DemocracyNow.org  Nov. 6, 2024 Social movements cannot be turned on and off. “The Black Lives Matter social movement, at its center, have been damaged and have been demobilized. In the last election, in 20209, that there was so much focus on getting Biden elected . . . Biden faced no protest . . . actually we have a lot of rebuilding to do. . . . “Young people . . .  saddled with debt they cannot repay. . . . exponentially rising rents . . . dystopic horizon for young people.” Keeanga-Yamahatta Taylor: Democrats Demobilized Their Base: A Movement Is Now Needed to Oppose Trump . democracynow.org  Nov. 6, 2024 TRUMP Donald Trump’s supporters objected to “migrants; inflation; and war.” Owen Jones. “I’ve been on the road speaking to the U.S. right.” The Guardian . Nov. 6, 2024. “The Trump campaign focused on putting the candidate in people's social media feeds, relying on podcasters, influencers, and hip-hop artists to help spread its message.” Trump argued us versus them “against elites, out-of-touch liberals, and the undocumented immigrants he claimed were taking Black jobs and totally destroying our Hispanic population.” He attacked transgender surgeries and athletes “as broad metaphors for a left-wing ideology run amok.” Michael C. Bender, Katie Glueck, Ruth Igielnik, and Jennifer Medina. New York Times  Nov. 6, 2024. “Donald Trump has very few guardrails.” democracynow.org  John Nichols, National Affairs correspondent for TheNation. “Under Trump . . . we’re in for huge turmoil. . . . We were now in a country under a dictatorial corporate state. . . . They spent tens of millions of dollars on ads going after Trump instead of going after the four years that Trump deep-sided so many critical issues and positions in his term as president. . . . Millions of people are basically saying, we’re sick of throwaway lines. We’re sick of not having the government return the benefits of massive taxation to us. We’re sick of - all we hear about is empire abroad. . . . “It’s the Heritage Foundation. It’s 2025. It’s the takeover of departments that are dedicated to standing up for the people, the Environmental Protection Bureau, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Auto Safety Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department. . . . They want to destroy the civil service.” “This is the collapse of the Democratic Party”: Ralph Nader on Roots of Trump’s Win Over Harris.” democracynow.org   Nov. 6, 2024 “A chunk of the Trumpist movement fear what they see as an existential threat to white America and believe that unless the Democrats are ejected, the U.S. will reach a tipping point which will permanently subsume them demographically. For others, it isn’t simply blind racism, but misdirected anger caused by social discontent. . . . Without a political to offer a compelling alternative explanation, Trumpist scapegoating filled the vacuum.” Workers believe that Trump, while wealthy, understands them. “Large swathes of the American people are hurting.” Mehdi Hasan “Then there’s war. . . . suggesting Russia would have avoided staging its invasion if Trump had been President on the grounds he was unpredictable and nutty.” Mehdi Hasan George Conway “By 2020, after the chaos, the derangement, and the incompetence, we knew a lot better. . . . And most other Americans did, too, voting him out of office that fall. And when his criminal attempt to steal the election culminated in the violence of January 6, their judgment was vindicated. So, there was no excuse this year. . . . They “knew exactly what they were signing up for. . . . We knew and have known for years. . . . Every American knew or should have known. The man elected president last night is a depraved and brazen pathological liar, a shameless con man, a sociopathic criminal, a man who has no moral or social conscience, empathy, or remorse. He has no respect for the Constitution. . . . The system the Framers set up . . . cannot protect a free people from themselves. . . . It’s also part of the drug of American exceptionalism . . . amnesia of net seeing how he handled COVID . . . of not remembering his tariff wars that basically almost bankrupted farmers in Iowa.” Alex Henderson. “George Conway: Supporters of ‘depraved pathological liar’ Trump had ‘no excuse’ this time.” Alternet . Nov. 7, 2024 “The horrors of Project 2025 . . . for Social Security, what that meant for Medicare . . . for education . . .  for equity.” Professor of African American Studies at Emory University Carol Anderson said, “The Confederacy Won.” DemocracyNow.org  Nov. 6, 2024 “He said he wants to criminally punish women. . . . was responsible for kids at the border being placed in cages, being fed frozen burritos. . . . had his lawyers fighting to deny those children soap and toothpaste . . . This was a president who failed on COVID, who made sure that he had medications for himself. . . . White women overwhelmingly voted for the former president, but  yet also voted for the constitutional protection or statewide protections of abortion rights.” Georgetown University Constitutional Law Professor Michelle Goodwin. DemocracyNow.org  Nov. 6, 2024 CONGRESS “It’s got to be focused on Congress.” “This is the collapse of the Democratic Party”: Ralph Nader on Roots of Trump’s Win Over Harris.” democracynow.org   Nov. 6, 2024 GAZA   Referring to Gaza, Sarsour says, “Kamala Harris continued to parrot the usual talking points . . . without any action plan. . . . And all Kamala Harris had to say in this election was I will uphold international law. . . . They were too busy courting Liz Cheney.” “Linda Sarsour: Harris’ Embrace of Pro-Israel Policies at Odds with Democratic Base .”   democracynow.org  Nov. 6, 2024. Gaza did not count in this election, which reflects the selfishness of Americans. The price of bread is more important than tens of thousands of people being killed with US weapons. democracynow.org  John Nichols, National Affairs correspondent for TheNation “It is very important to note that people in Congress who stood up on Gaza . . . and who made it through the primaries where AIPAC tried to defeat them did very, very well yesterday. . . . So, this is a devastating moment for our communities. Donald Trump is someone that we know very well. We don’t only know him on domestic policy. . . . He gave sovereignty to Israel over the Golan Heights. He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel. There is an Israeli settlement named after Donald Trump.” “Linda Sarsour: Harris’ Embrace of Pro-Israel Policies at Odds with Democratic Base .”  democracynow.org  Nov. 6, 2024. JOE BIDEN Biden should never have been the nominee in 2020. Arguments that Sanders lost South Carolina and that they did are suspect. The democratic party and the mainstream news media blew South Carolina out of proportion. Sanders had a problem in repeatedly saying the same thing about one percent. Elizabeth Warren was specific; however, her attack on Bernie, saying he did not think a woman could become president, doomed her. Bernie’s support for Israel over the years and its slaughter in Gaza revolted many. So, we were left with Joe Biden, an ardent zionist and Neo-liberal to the max. However, people could see that, I hope, and still vote for Bernie. While he lacked specifics, you knew where his ideas were. In addition, “Joe Biden . . . couldn’t deliver on things like protecting and expanding voting rights. . . . why didn’t the Joe Biden administration push Congress to codify Roe? . . . “You are either going to be loyal to your base, which majority supported ceasefire and support an arms embargo against Israel, that support progressive issues, or you’re going to continue to try to recruit a constituency that does not exist.” “Linda Sarsour: Harris’ Embrace of Pro-Israel Policies at Odds with Democratic Base .”  democracynow.org  Nov. 6, 2024. “2020 protests . . . and the way that those protests were siphoned into the presidential campaigns and the way that people were actively demobilized and told that access to the Biden administration could produce the goods they wanted. . . . the Biden administration was unable to follow through on the promises it made, no response, no leadership, no direction.” Keeanga-Yamahatta Taylor: Democrats Demobilized Their Base: A Movement Is Now Needed to Oppose Trump . democracynow.org  Nov. 6, 2024 HAWAII While still small in good-ole liberal Hawaii, Trump's support is growing. And it is not simply retired military personnel settling here. I passed a well-known shopping center and a racially, ethnically, and culturally mixed group of about a dozen well-organized people with signs saying, "Jesus is my savior, and Trump is my president." Ultimately, he received 36% of the vote, which was larger than in 2016 and 2020. And don’t bother analyzing or trying to reform the Democrats. They have shown their allegiance to the wealthy and militarism.

Nancy Chang. Silencing Political Dissent . 2002. Online “Historically, the press has played a crucial watchdog role over our government operations. The 1971 Pentagon Papers case affirmed the right of the media to publish a government study that documented their “use of secrecy and deception to gain the public’s support for the [Vietnam] war.” U.S. Supreme Court Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas stated that “In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. . . . The press was protected [from government censorship] so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people.” “The Bush administration’s strict supervision over the release of information concerning its military campaign has prevented the press from bar[ing] the secrets of government and inform[ing] the people. And the press, for its start, has shown itself far too willing to comply with White House requests that it limits its news coverage.” In October 2001, the major television news outlets “announced that they had reached a joint agreement to abridge future videotaped statements from Osama bin Laden and his followers.” This was based on the “unsubstantiated speculation “ of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice “that the videos could contain coded messages.” Further self-censorship exists as well. Two columnists were fried for referring to President Bush as a coward.  COINTELPRO “Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI operated COINTELPRO, a secret political intelligence program that covertly spied on and interfered with law-abiding political organizations that were engaged in activities protected by the First Amendment.” “The program’s purposes were sinister. According to a meme written by J. Edgar Hoover . . . on May 9, 1969, COINTELPRO’s mission was designed to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize activities of individuals and organizations perceived by the government to pose a threat to domestic interests. “COINTELPRO was created in 1956 to investigate the Communist Party, but by 1961, it had turned its attention to the Socialist Workers Party. With the social unrest and upheaval of the mid-1960s, COINTELPRO widened its targets to include the civil rights movement, the black nationalist movement, the white supremacist movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the “New Left,” which included groups opposed to the Vietnam War. From 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. remained the target of a ferocious FBI smear campaign.”  In 1976, Senator Frank Church of Idaho chaired a committee investigating which found that the FBI’s COINTELPRO frequently used “informants and agents provocateurs to infiltrated and disrupt political organizations, illegal wiretaps break-ins and the spread of false rumors that caused reputations to be ruined, jobs to be lost, and marriages and friendships to be destroyed. COINTELPRO was effective in suppressing many dissident political movements that bourgeoned in the mid-1960s. Groups that were the targets of the FBI’s covert actions to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize their activities found it difficult to maintain their cohesiveness, momentum, and ability to attract new adherents.” After September 11, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed a return to COINTELPRO, and the media did a good job preparing the public to support this.  Ashcroft’s May 30, 2002, permissive guidelines . . . the state has been set for a replay of the worst of the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO program.” Unfortunately, the Ashcroft guidelines, with their broad grant of intelligence-gathering powers to the FBI, coupled with the USA PATRIOT ACT’s broad definition of domestic terrorism, are [written in 2002] likely to lead to intrusive intelligence gathering on those who engage in non-violent civil disobedience or in lawful but confrontational political activities, as well as those who attract the attention of the FBI as it trolls through private databases, attends churches and mosques, and surfs the Web.”

Rashid Khalidi. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: a history of settler colonialism and resistance, 1917-2017 . Theodor Herzl set foot in Palestine only once, in 1898. (4) Others have cited this quote from Herzl that “We must appropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. . . . Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” (4) Herzl and other Zionists ignored the population of Palestine. (5) After World War I the British ruled Palestine under a League of Nations Mandate. They encouraged Jewish immigration to Palestine. (8) “14 to 17 percent of the Palestinian adult male population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled” by the destruction of the “Great 1936-39 Arab Revolt against British rule.” In addition, the Jews flooded Palestine fleeing the Nazis in Germany. As a result the Jewish population in Palestine rose from 18 percent in 1932 to 31 percent in 1939. “This provided the demographic critical mass and military manpower that were necessary for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.” (8) Zionism used the Bible to sell its program to Christian Britain and America. The reality is that it was a “colonial national movement.” Although Zionism’s use of the Bible arguing that Palestine was the homeland of the Jews was supposed to negate the colonial argument. (9) Herzl argued that the Jewish state in Palestine “would form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism.” (10) Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land; that the Jews made Palestine bloom. (11) The Balfour Declaration “never mentioned the Palestinians.” (11) The now highly dismissed book, From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters meant to prove that the Palestinians did not exist. (11) This propaganda, is contained in the absurd Leon Uris novel, Exodus, which was made into a star studded movie. None of these works or those of similar points of view used Palestinian, British Mandate or even Zionist immigrant sources. Former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee proclaimed in 2015 “There’s really no such thing as the Palestinians.” (11-12) The right-wing Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky  wrote in 1923, “Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of Palestine into the Land of Israel.” Interestingly, most Zionists “protested the innocent purity of their aims.” Not Jabotinsky. (12) Everyone knew that Zionism was colonialism. This was not acceptable post-World War II. However, Israel got away with it. (13) It is hard for people to understand that Zionism is colonialism just as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are. (14)

Ari Berman. Minority Rule: the right-wing attack on the will of the people - and the fight to resist . 2024 (Kindle Edition) The most significant issue is the “encroachment of the powerful few upon the rights of the many.” Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette, 1913 In 2022 the "University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats released a detailed study of the more than seven hundred people arrested for breaching the Capitol. They were 93 percent white and 85 percent male. . . . they were more likely to reside in counties that had experienced the most significant declines in the white population.” (314) Constitutional Convention of 1787 At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Edmund “Randolph . . . took aim at the governments of the thirteen states, which in the minds of the delegates had led the country to the brink of collapse by being too solicitous of the common man. Our chief danger arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions . . . It is a maxim which I hold incontrovertible, that the powers of government exercised by the people swallows up the other branches. None of the constitutions have provided sufficient checks against the democracy.” “The stated purpose of the convention was for the Articles of Confederation - the country’s original constitution adopted in 1781 - to be corrected and enlarged. But in order to restrain, if possible, the fury of democracy, Randolph laid out a blueprint known as the Virginia Plan, for an entirely new national government to replace the Continental Congress and counter the power of the states.” (38-39) “The new Constitution proposed by Randolph limited the public’s role in the selection of the country’s leaders, separated the government into different branches, and divided power between the federal and state governments to filter popular opinion and temper populist passions. That structure was designed to restrain popular majorities and curb the excesses of democracy in the states to protect the interests of a wealthy, propertied white male minority. It marked a radical turnaround from the Declaration of Independence that had been signed in that very room eleven years earlier.” (39) Aristocracy was confirmed as a part of the American political process with the creation of the Senate. There was conflict among the delegates. Some argued against a Senate which could impose the minority over the majority. (51) The established U.S. Constitution allowed for the election of the majority of senators by only one third of the country. “The unelected senate would not reflect the will of the people; nor the will of the states where a majority of people lived.” (53) Rhode Island would have the same power as New York. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 22, “Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail.” Next, the slave states dominated the House of Representatives. (53) Northerners who opposed slavery feared losing Southern support for ratification of the Constitution. (55) James Madison Madison feared “the will of the majority.” It was the “evils” of popular democracy that produced the new American constitution, according to James Madison. (44) Madison opposed “populism.” (46) “Madison regarded the protection of property to be of paramount importance in an enlightened republic.” (47) James Madison “wanted to temper majority rule, not eliminate it altogether.” Madison did not like small populated states having the same votes as primarily populated states. (52) “The courts were designed to protect minority rights from the branches of government. Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 78 that an independent judiciary was intended to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals and prevent serious oppressions of the minority party in the community. Thurgood Marshall wrote that the court’s legitimacy stemmed from its reputation as a protector of the powerless.” (140) “Yet for much of U.S. history, the courts defended powerful minorities instead of vulnerable ones. The Supreme Court famously upheld the institutions of slavery and Jim Crow . . . and sided with wealthy economic interests during the late 1800s and early 1900s.” (141) “Beginning in 1953, the Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren embarked on a minority rights revolution that embraced a broad conception of equal protection expanding civil rights and civil liberties.”  A backlash occurred “among aggrieved white conservatives. Impeach Earl Warren stickers appeared across the South.” (141) In 1971, “corporate lawyer Lewis Powell . . . urged corporations to counterattack” by becoming more politically active. (141) “Under our constitutional system, Powell wrote, especially with an activist minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic, and political change.” (142) John Adams John Adams emphasized minority rights. A majority, he believed, would abolish debts, tax the rich and not others, and divide things equally. (47) Adams wanted to “protect the propertied minority from the propertyless majority.” Madison’s solution was to make the government so large that the majority could not unite.” (48) Democracy “America’s founding document held that governments derived their just powers from the consent of the governed.” (40) The concept of democracy, ruled by the majority of people, had been around since the ancient Greeks. Jefferson accepted this point of view and things. (40) The state constitutions of “1776 placed the bulk of political power in popularly elected state legislatures that were expected to reflect and encourage democratic participation. Legislators were elected annually, with the slogan where annual elections end, tyranny begins so that they would be as accountable as possible to the public.” (41) Nevertheless, the state legislatures of the republic “were far more reflective of everyday society than the colonial ones, which had been dominated by wealthy merchants and lawyers.” (41) The elites, such as Alexander Hamilton, stated, “The general disease which infects all our constitutions [is] an excess of popularity.” (42) “To the country’s economic and political elite, it appeared that the state governments were favoring the poor over the rich and debtors over creators in order to win the sentiments of the common man.” (42) Electoral College  The reactionary conservative white majority (later to become a minority) is drastically overrepresented in the Electoral College. The Congress and gerrymandered legislative districts because of a political system that diminishes the voices of urban areas, young Americans, and voters of color has retreated behind a fortress to stop what it views as the coming siege.” (12)REVIEW James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris wanted the people to select the president. Morris said, “the president should be the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes, against legislative tyranny . . . if he is to be the guardian of the people, let him be appointed by the people.” (38) The argument against the people voting included that they “were too ignorant to select a wise national leader. “The people are uninformed and would be misled by a few designing men said Elbridge Gerry.” (58) As a compromise, James Wilson “proposed a complicated alternative where electors selected by the voters would choose the president, although states could still determine how electors were named. Though the public would not directly elect the president, Wilson believed the electors - who would ideally be men of high character - were preferable to selection of the executive by the state legislatures or Congress, which would eliminate the public’s role entirely. But it still meant that the public had, at best, an indirect say in choosing the president.” (60) “Ironically, it was Wilson, the great democrat of the convention, who proposed two of the most undemocratic compromises of the Constitution: the three-fifths clause and the electoral college. (60) “Small states like Delaware received a disproportionate number of electoral votes over large ones like Massachusetts, and slave states triumphed over free ones. . . . Virginia’s 300,000 enslaved people gave the state six more House seats and presidential lectors than Pennsylvania. This became known as the Slave Power.”  “And because the people would not directly choose the president, there was little incentive for them to vote in the first place.” (61) “But because some states did not hold a popular election and others restricted voting to white male property owners, only 43,000 people or 1.8 percent of the total population voted in the country’s first true national election.” (61) “The Electoral College is one of the South’s few remaining political safeguards, wrote the Alabama senator James Allen in October 1969. Let’s keep it.” (326) Shay’s Rebellion  In 1786, Daniel Shays led a rebellion. They “shut down courthouses” to prevent foreclosures. Massachusetts was on the verge of a civil war. (42) The wealthy throughout the country were horrified. This would be “one of the largest agrarian uprisings in American history.” (42) The fear was that most Massachusetts residents “sought to abolish all debts and confiscate private property. [George] Washington responded that mankind left to themselves are unfit for their own government, and feared that revolt would spread to other states. Leading figures became openly contemptuous of democracy and yearned for the deals of monarchy.” (43) Shay’s rebellion was crushed. “Shayites were banned from voting or holding office.” This is a precedent for Donald Trump and the January 6 crowd. Also, those who fought for the Confederacy should have been included, right-wing complaints notwithstanding. In 1787, a change occurred with a governor and legislature, which “pardoned the rebels and aided the farmers. Madison concluded that “the structure of government was to blame.” (43) Post-Civil War “Back in August 1890, the surviving ex-Confederate leaders in Mississippi had convened in the state capitol of Jackson to draft a new constitution that would disenfranchise Black voters once and for all.” (241) Former Confederate general James Z. George said, “Good government in Mississippi can only come from the predominance of influence and political power of the white race.” (241) Congressional Republicans resisted “the House of Representatives passed a bill . . . empowering federal supervisors to oversee registration, voting, and ballot counting in the South and giving federal judges the power to invalidate fraudulent election results. The Government which made the Black man a citizen of the United States is bound to protect him in his rights as a citizen of the United States, and it is a cowardly Government if it does not do it,” said Massachusetts representative Henry Cabot Lodge. (241-242) “Because Republicans controlled the Senate, Democrats staged a dramatic filibuster  - the first of many Southern-led efforts to kill civil rights legislation  - giving exhaustive speeches and using a variety of procedural delays to derail the bill. They eventually persuaded a group of Western Republicans from sparsely populated mining states who feared the expansion of suffrage to Chinese immigrants and wanted to focus instead on economic benefits for their region to join them in killing the bill in early 1891.” By 1893, the Democrats controlled the Federal government “for the first time since before the Civil War.” They repealed Reconstruction and voting rights laws. One Mississippi congressman called those laws the “offensive theory of majority rule.” (242) Conservative White Majority “To entrench and hold on to power, a shrinking conservative white majority is relentlessly exploiting the undemocratic features of America’s political institutions while doubling down on a wide variety of anti-democratic tactics, such as voter suppression, election subversion, dark money, legislative power grabs, immigration restrictions, census manipulation, and the whitewashing of history.” (12) “The reactionary conservatives behind the drive for minority rule claim to be the only legitimate heirs of representative government, but they’re seeking to delegitimize and warp the institutions created by the founders. “They claim to be appealing to freedom, but they’re trying to limit freedom for historically marginalized groups that were written out of the country’s original governing institutions. “They claim to be the only true Americans, but they’re trying to sharply narrow the definition of citizenship and who is entitled to exercise those rights.” (16) “A minority of Americans are hell-bent on nullifying the will of the people.” Resistance to disenfranchisement “is the defining fight of our time.” (16) The Heritage Foundation was founded in 1973 to counter the Brookings Institution. One of the founders admired Barry Goldwater. Another conservative organization was the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which worked with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. The Koch brothers were among the Heritage Foundation's donors. (231) One of the first leaders of the Heritage Foundation admitted he did not want everybody to vote. “Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now.” (232) The conservative goal was “to discourage broad participation in the political process.” (232) The Heritage Foundation is “the driving force behind much of the Republican Party agenda.” (232) “Wealthy candy executive and founder of the far-right John Birch Society” believed “the chief danger in a democracy was majority rule.” (263) He also believed the Constitution “was divinely inspired and should not be changed by a majority vote.” (263) “The Birch Society sought to impeach Earl Warren, who they claimed had taken the lead in the drive to convert this country into a democracy, and said that the civil rights movement was trying to establish an independent Negro-Soviet Republic.” (263) “Before the early 1980s, there had been three major strands of conservatism - racial, corporate, and evangelical - that were sometimes at odds. These forces came together with the founding of the Federalist Society, sharing a joint goal of taking control of the courts. . . . it was started by a small group of conservative law students at Yale and the University of Chicago whose advisers were Robert Bork at Yale and Antonin Scalia at Chicago. They defined freedom in a way that was beneficial to their cause. “Bork and Scalia preached a new doctrine of originalism - which held that the Constitution and its amendments should be interpreted as written or intended at the time - as a way to overturn the decisions of the Warren Court and the civil rights laws of the 1960s. . . . they largely ignored or attempted to rewrite the meaning of the Reconstruction amendments. Scalia would call the Voting Rights Act a racial entitlement, while Bork wrote that the Warren Court’s decision striking down the Poll Tax in Virginia turned the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause into an Equal Gratification clause.” (142-143) Conservative columnist James J. Kilpatrick stated the “constitutional cases clocks must always be turned back; we must accept the Constitution as we find it.” (143) “So now Trump’s team was adopting a new strategy: lobbying Republican-controlled legislatures to override the popular vote winners in their states and appoint new electors for Trump.” (195) “But the white backlash that followed those victories - an attempt to overturn the election, an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, a record number of bills to restrict voting rights  - had all the markings of a concerted attempt to end the Second Reconstruction.” (226) Supreme Court In the Brown decision desegregating public schools, the Supreme Court relied on the Fourth Amendment. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that times have changed since 1868, 1896, and therefore, the Court “must consider public education in the light of its full development.” (143) Immigration A citizenship question was added to the 2020 census, intended to “scare away immigrants.”  Immigration at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries saw southern and eastern Europeans and Chinese. Anglo-Saxon whites “welcomed the old immigrants from northwest Europe but demonized the new arrivals. . . . We have admitted the dregs of Europe until America has been Orientalized, Europeanized, Africanized, and mongrelized to that insidious degree that our genius, stability, greatness, and promise of advancement and achievements are actually menaced,” said an Arkansas Democrat. (170) does not know who built America.  Censuses Thus, the 1929 censuses gave disproportionate representation to districts with much lower populations. “This was another form of nullification, designed to limit the impact of demographic changes that were taking place nationwide.” (172) “The Supreme Court struck down this system of rural minority rule in a series of one person, one vote cases in the early 1960s, holding that state legislative and congressional districts must be roughly equal in population and apportioned on a population basis.” (173) “Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote . . . in 1964 . . . Legislators represent people, not trees or acres.” (173)  Questions about the constitutionality of asking about citizenship on the 2020 census. (173) John Eastman challenged “long-established views of the Constitution to fit Trump’s goals. He was best known for arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment did not grant citizenship to children born in the United States to noncitizen parents, which would have stripped citizenship from millions of Americans who were disproportionately nonwhite.” (186) “The effort to overturn the 2020 election - more so than any other event in modern American history - would reveal the extraordinary tactics the country’s conservative white minority would employ to attempt to prevent a new multiracial governing majority from taking power.” (195) Patrick Buchanan Patrick Buchanan harnessed the anger of segregationist whites with the ideas of John C. Calhoun. (73) Obama’s election in 2008 reignited “Calhoun’s fear of a dispossessed white minority.” (73) “After nearly a century of Jim Crow, the civil rights movement brought about a Second Reconstruction to redeem the squandered promise of the first.” (73) Segregationists and Pat Buchanan used Calhoun’s ideas to organize the white backlash. (73) The dispossessed white minority reacted vociferously to the election of Barack Obama. (73) Increases in immigration mean whites will be in the minority by 2042. (75) “This was the demographic and political revolution Buchanan had been warning his party about for two decades.” (75) Pat Buchanan made a cautious comparison between the United States of 1860 and the contemporary United States. (81) Pat Buchanan correctly predicted in 1990 “that so many political fights were really about culture.” (314) In 1996, he charged that schools turned children against their “Judeo-Christian heritage, against America’s heroes and American history, against the values of faith, family, and country.” (314) Pat Buchanan wrote Richard Nixon’s speech criticizing the Warren Court and pledged to appoint “strict constructionists” to the Supreme Court. He believed judges should interpret the law rather than make it. (141) Tea Party “Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips . . . called for voting rights to once again be restricted to property owners.” (80) “And at virtually every Tea Party meeting, someone brought up the Tenth Amendment, which gave states powers not reserved for the federal government and formed the basis for Calhoun’s theory of nullification, to justify blocking Obama’s health care reform law.” (80) Berman argues that “the backlash to Obama’s election represented a decisive turning point in American politics.” He hoped to win over Republicans, but the Tea Party rose. The Republicans feel in touch with the Tea Party. (81) The GOP felt threatened by Obama’s election. (101) Their response was to restrict voting, which overwhelmingly affected Democratic voters. Republican legislatures passed new identification laws. “Voters who tried to obtain a free ID at the DMV were repeatedly told that they had to pay for underlying documents, like a birth certificate.” 85% of denials were to non-whites. (112) John C. Calhoun South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun was the South’s “most prominent spokesman” for slavery. In 1850, he warned, “The Union is in danger . . . the immediate cause was the long-continued agitation of the slave question on the part of the North, and many aggressions which they have made on the rights of the South.” (68) “The population between North and South had been roughly equal when the Constitution was adopted, but by 1850, the growth of the industrial North and the expansion of U.S. territory in the free West meant that the North was home to four million more people than the South.” Calhoun “proposed giving the Southern white minority veto power over the country’s growing antislavery majority by letting a state nullify any federal law it deemed unconstitutional and appointing two presidents, one from the South and one from the North, with the ability to override congressional legislation.” (69) He said, “The two great divisions of society are not rich and poor, but white and black.” (71) Voting Rights Act “But the most notable aspect of the debate was the lack of discussion about including voting rights in the Constitution.” (62) More than half the population could not vote: many poor white men, African Americans, and women. That decision was left to the states.  Interestingly, “in the decades after ratification, states began eliminating property requirements for white men but restricting the franchise for everyone else. Class disparities didn’t disappear, but race and gender divides now took prominence.” (63) The Supreme overturned the Voting Rights Act. “The ramifications were immediate.” States enacted strict voter ID laws, “eliminated same-day voter registration, and cut early voting, including Sunday voting, when black churches held Souls to the Polls voter mobilization drives; the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found that it targeted Black voters with almost surgical precision.” DMV offices were closed, which affected Black voters the most. (134) The Project for Fair Representation challenged the Voting Rights Act, demanding that “Texas draw state legislative districts based on eligible voters instead of on the total population. . . . The group claimed in 2015 that the current system denied eligible voters their fundamental right to an equal vote.” (174) Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan believed this reactionary voting method imperiled our government system. (182) Analysis of the American Constitution “Sixty-five years later, the abolitionist Frederick Douglass commemorated the signing of the Declaration Of Independence . . . denouncing the chasm between the country’s founding ideals and the harsh reality of slavery. The blessings in which, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common . . . The rich inheritances of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers are shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought steps and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison burned a copy of the Constitution, referring to it as “a convenient with death.” (57) In 1987, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall bristled at the celebrations of 200 years of the Constitution. In a speech in Hawaii, he said, “We, the People, when the Founding Fathers used this phrase in 1787, they did not have in mind the majority of American citizens.” (64) “Marshall challenged the oft-repeated platitudes about the unparalleled genius and foresight of the founders To the contrary . . . the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today.” (64) Berman writes that the U.S. Constitution “represented a stunning counterrevolution against the principles of the revolutionary era and set the tone for oligarchy to triumph over democracy.” One writer at the time agreed, saying that the Constitution was “a transfer of power from the many to the few. The new Constitution would swallow up all us little folks, wrote another. (65) The following two hundred years would conflict between those in power and those who want control. (66-67) Stacy Abrams Georgia closed numerous polling places, making voting a tortuous experience. (202) Georgia became “a new laboratory for oligarchy.” (231) Stacy Abrams - In 2013 [Stacy] Abrams founded “the New Georgia Project to sign up Georgia residents for the Affordable Care Act after the GOP governor Nathan Deal rejected Medicaid expansion. . . . the group pivoted to launching the largest voter registration drive in the state since the civil rights era, with a mission to civically engage the rising electorate in our state. . . . “By the summer of 2014, Abram’s group had submitted tens of thousands of new registrations. . . . This alarmed Georgia Republicans, who were locked in close races for governor and senator.” Georgia Secretary Of State Brian Kemp warned that all of the new and minority voters spell defeat for Republicans. (153) Therefore, Kemp investigated “Abram’s group for significant illegal activities, including forged voter registration applications.” (153) “Former President Jimmy Carter, who had monitored elections all over the world, said that Kemp’s position ran counter to the most fundamental principle of democratic elections - that an independent and impartial election authority manage the electoral process.” (153) Republic vs. Democracy A frequent conservative argument is that the United States is a Republic, not a Democracy.” (262) The Republic vs. Democracy argument is fallacious, according to Berman. “Madison strove to combine the two forms of government, creating a democratic republic where representatives would refine and filter the views of the public to achieve an enduring consensus, diminish the influence of any one faction, and protect minority rights. . . . The conservative invocation of a republic . . . was used throughout U.S. history to protect oligarchies of privilege - such as Southern slaveholders or corporate robber barons - from the pressure of popular majorities.” (263-264) Nancy MacLean. Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. At the beginning of American history, voters told their elected officials “what they wanted . . . and how to tax for it.” (7) Robin L. Einhorn wrote in American Slavery, American Taxation, “American governments were more democratic, stronger, and more competent where slavery was negligible or nonexistent. They were more aristocratic, weaker, and less competent where slavery dominated, as well as more likely to be captured by the wealthy few, who turned them to their own ends. Voters in free states wanted active government: they taxed themselves for public schools, roads to travel . . . canals to move their goods and more. . . . In southern states, the yeoman of the backcountry, where slaves were fewer, often tried to get their governments to take up their concerns but found that the planters saw threats to their property in any political action they did not control.” (7) “The anti-government rhetoric that continues to saturate our political life is rooted in [support for] slavery rather than liberty.” (7) John C. Calhoun and his allies knew “that they were practicing a type of capitalism that would not pass democratic scrutiny much longer if majority opinion was allowed to proceed in Washington.” (9) Elite minority rule gained traction in the 1950s in Virginia. Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd detested FDR and his New Deal. Byrd and his allies resurrected John C. “Calhoun’s theories of government for the battle against Brown vs. Board of Education.” (11) In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich A. Hayek wrote, “Without freedom in economic affairs, there could be no lasting personal and political freedom.” (39)  Prof. James Buchanan read a nineteenth-century dissertation by Swedish economist Knut Wicksell, who wrote, “It would seem to be a blatant injustice if someone should be forced to contribute toward the costs of some activity which does not further his interests or may even be diametrically opposed to them.” (42) In 1956, Buchanan proposed the Thomas Jefferson Center for Political Economy and Social Philosophy. It would “be guided by two traditions: that of the old-fashioned libertarians whose ideas encouraged laissez-faire economic policies in nineteenth-century England and America, and that of the Western conservatives, who feared revolt of the masses . . . and sought new ways to ensure social order.” (45) No New Dealers could be part of the Center. That included supporters of unions “and government intervention in the economy.” (45) “Since the abolitionists had first enlisted the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to try to stop the profitable interstate traffic in human beings, and later when the New Deal had leveraged it to regulate the economy, class, and race had been interwoven with property rights and public power in ways that cannot be understood well with a single-factor analysis.” (69) “In 1962, in Baker vs. Carr and Reynolds vs. Sims, the Supreme Court ended the practice by which the states simply ignored census data showing population growth in the more moderate urban and suburban areas in order to give rural conservative districts more than their fair share of representation. . . . Now the high court ruled, state governments must apportion representation on the principle of one person, one vote.” (75) “The libertarianism cause, from the time it first attracted wider support during the southern school crisis, was never really about freedom as most people would define it. It was about the promotion of crippling division among the people so as to end any interference with what those who held vast power over others believed should be their prerogatives. Its leaders had no scruples about enlisting white supremacy to achieve capital supremacy. And today, knowing that the majority does not share their goals and would stop them if they understood the endgame, the team of paid operatives seeks to win by stealth. Now, as then, the leaders seek Calhoun-style liberty for the few - the liberty to concentrate vast wealth so as to deny elementary fairness and freedom to the many.” (234)

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jason+stanley+christane+amanpour

https://web.archive.org/web/20240828102249/https://grist.org/transportation/the-forgotten-fight-to-ban-gas-powered-cars-in-the-1960s/

Jeff Goodall. The Heat Will Kill You First” life and death on a scorched planet . 2023 Global Boiling is here. This book, published in 2023 by writer Jeff Goodall, details the current climate catastrophe. Fortunately, he offers solutions to avoid the Goldilocks Zone, or habitable zone in the solar system and perhaps the universe. “Definitions of extreme heat, like definitions of pornography, depend a lot on context. . . . in Texas, a temperature rise of one or two degrees is imperceptible. In Antarctica, however, a change of one or two degrees can be the difference between ice and water and between stability and collapse.” (169) NASA climate scientist James Hansen believes that “estimates were far too conservative and that the waters could rise by as much as ten feet by 2100.” (171) “In the world before air-conditioning, there was less CO2 in the atmosphere to trap the heat and less asphalt and concrete on the ground to radiate it back to you.” (207) “The rise of air-conditioning accelerated the construction of sealed boxes, where the buildings’ only airflow is through the filtered ducts of the air-conditioning unit. It doesn’t have to be this way. Look at any old building in a hot climate, whether it’s in Sicily or Marrakesh, or Tehran. Architects understood the importance of shade, airflow, insulation, and light colors. They oriented buildings to capture cool breezes and deflect the worst of the heat of the afternoon. They built with thick walls and white roofs, and transoms over doors to encourage airflow. Anyone who has ever spent a few minutes in an adobe in Tucson or walked on the narrow streets of old Seville knows how well these construction methods work. But all this wisdom about how to deal with heat, accumulated over centuries of practical experience, is all too often ignored. “In this, air-conditioning is not just a technology of personal comfort; it is also a technology of forgetting.” (222) The cause of the “killer heat” affects those not responsible for it as well, such as Pakistan, which produces precious little CO2 emissions. (224) “The heat wave ranking system used by the National Weather Service (NWS) has very little scientific rigor. The NWS ranks heat in three categories: watches, warnings, and advisories. Heat watches are the least severe in this ranking system; heat advisories are the most severe.” (233) Goodall writes of deadly heat waves throughout the world. In Seville, Spain, July heat killed “about fourteen and fifteen a day. . . . During the heat wave, we had many days when deaths numbered in the twenties. And some were in the thirties.” (242) Until recently, Paris’ summer temperatures stayed around the 70s degrees Fahrenheit, so no one had air-conditioning. By 2003, Paris experienced a heat wave. In August, temperatures rose to “95 degrees, sometimes spiking up to 104 degrees. It didn’t cool off much at night either.” (246) “Even working around the clock, burials and cremations could not keep up with the number of deaths.” (247)  “For cities, the challenge of thriving on a superheated planet is twofold. . . . . Another fifty years of suburban sprawl is not the answer. Cities need to be denser. Cars need to be replaced with bikes and public transit. New buildings need to be not only efficient and built of sustainable materials but also safe for people during increasingly intense heat waves. That means more green space, more trees, more water, more shade, more thermally intelligent urban design.  “The second, and more difficult, challenging is figuring out what to do with existing buildings and cityscapes. The vast majority of existing buildings are ill-suited for the extreme climate of the twenty-first century: poorly insulated, poorly sited, dependent on air-conditioning to keep them habitable.” (250) Different places worldwide are working to make their areas survivable throughout Global Boiling. Urban gardens, clean water, plexiglass awnings. (251) Fifteen thousand people died in “France in the 2003 heat wave.” The French response was, “We have to take better of old people.” (252) Many cities worldwide have never had extreme weather, so there was no concern about global warming. (252) Nineteenth-century Paris constructed zinc roofs. However, these were counterproductive in the twenty-first century. Today, “zinc roofs are deadly.” (254) “Ripping off the roof” people had to confront preservationists. “It would take years to get a permit, and then, most likely, you will be denied.” (255) In 2018, the new mayor of Paris was rebuked for limiting cars, and this caused the so-called yellow vest protests. (257) “Paris recorded its highest temperature ever: 108.7 degrees.” (258) “There used to be a lot of nice big shade trees in Phoenix, but they cut them all down in the 1960s because they were worried about how much water they used.” (260) Solutions to global boiling rely on class. Wealthy areas of Houston are “full of majestic trees.” A multi-ethnic poorer neighborhood “is an asphalt desert.” This is true of other urban areas of the world. (262) “Heat in a supposedly cold place is terrifying. Ice is a precision thermometer, registering the most minute changes.” (274) “For polar bears, heat equals starvation. They depend on sea ice to hunt seals.” Without the cold, they die. (274) “There are no signs or border crossing guards at the edge of the Goldilocks Zone. If we cross over, no alarms will go off. Depending on where you live, you may cross over sooner than others. But unless we take dramatic action now, we may all discover what it’s like to live outside the zone.” (292) “And it wasn’t just the scientists who knew. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson was warned, as have been many presidents after him. By 1977, Exxon (now ExxonMobil) not only knew that decades of burning fossil fuels would heat up the atmosphere but developed in-house climate models that projected those changes with remarkable accuracy. Despite that know wedge, we have not only continued burning fossil fuels, we have continued burning them with reckless abandon. . . . beyond the Goldilocks Zone.” (292) People can make the necessary changes, and technology is available to save humanity. However, there is no “political will, and big oil and gas companies wanting to milk their investments as long as they can.”  If we reach the Goldilocks Zone, some people will make it, and some won’t. Trees will die. Beaches will be under the ocean. “Mosquitoes and other insects will be year-round companions.” (293) In some areas, “outdoor life will become virtually impossible. People will flee . . . to . . . cooler climates.” (294) “The first and most striking consequence of the human race’s trip out of the Goldilocks Zone will be the widening of the thermal divide, the invisible but very real line that separates the cool from the suffering, the lucky from the damned.” (294) As we are confronted with immense catastrophe, all we can do is argue over minutiae. “In the long run, extreme heat is an extinction force.” (295)

New Cambridge History of Japan. Volume III, the Modern Japanese Nation and Empire, c. 1868 to the Twenty-First Century . Laura Hein ed. 2023 Patrick Wolfe’s “concept of settler colonialism” explains conflicts between “indigenous peoples” and “agricultural settlers.” The New Cambridge History of Japan  includes “borderlands.” Regardless, settler colonialism is violent because it is genocidal. ( New Cambridge History of Japan . 24) Katsuya Hirano writes that the Ainu in Hokkaido were exploited during the Tokugawa era. However, the Tokugawa did not take Ainu lands. Violence erupted between the Ainu and Japanese sent to Hokkaido during the Meiji period. This was a result of settler colonialism. ( New Cambridge History of Japan . 24) Brett L. Walker. A Concise History of Japan . 2015 People in northern Japan resisted Japanese rule from at least 300 A.D. (Walker 27) During the Nara and Heian periods, Japanese officials referred to the people as “toad barbarians.” (Walker 28) Trade brought changes and hurtful diseases to the Ainu. (Walker 135) Hokkaido makes up 20% of Japan. After the Japanese conquered the area, they found coal, which helped Japan industrialize. Hokkaido was “transformed into an agricultural breadbasket with the help of American advisors, well schooled in colonizing lands formerly inhabited by Indigenous peoples.” (Walker 136) “After the Battle of Sekigahara (1600), Iyeasu had recognized the Matsumae family’s exclusive rights to trade with the Ainu throughout Hokkaido.” (Walker 136) Actually, there were “five major groups” of Ainu. They had different languages “and other cultural practices.” (Walker 136) The Matsumae set up coastal trading posts with the Ainu. (Walker 136) Nevertheless, the increased trade led to conflict between the various Ainu committees and the largest war in the history of Hokkaido, the Shakushain’s War (1669). (Walker 137) Ainu trade with the Japanese caused overfishing “salmon and overheated deer . . . while [the] Japanese inadvertently introduced smallpox, measles, and syphilis to Ainu communities. Ainu undermined their own subsistence systems as such Japanese trade items as silks, swords, iron goods, rice, and sake became prestige items in Ainu communities. . . . Trade required that animals fell from the world of spirits and ancestors to the world of proto-capitalism, and become hunted commodities in the context of interaction with the Japanese.”  Finally, disease destroyed half of the Ainu population, and “Hokkaido was ripe for swift incorporation into the modern Japanese state within a matter of decades.” (Walker 138-139) Documentaries about the Ainu emphasize their abuse.  American Edwin Dun advised the Japanese government Hokkaido Development Agency “to oversee development of a livestock industry on Hokkaido.” (Walker 189) “Known as the father of Hokkaido agriculture Dun fastened Hokkaido’s future to sheep, horses, and cattle, representing a radical departure from Japan’s grain-farming past.” (Walker 189-190) “The disappearance of deer, an important prey species for wolves, proved one reason wolf predation on horses became so severe on Hokkaido.” (Walker 190) Thus, under Meiji, the Ainu hunted the wolves to “near extinction.” (Walker 190) “The cultural and ecological implications of wolf extinction on Hokkaido, as well as mainland Japan, cannot be underestimated.” (Walker 190) From 1689 to 1770, “Russian trappers collected pelts,” which they “viewed as tribute from the obedient conquered people of the North Pacific. Ainu were not always submissive participants, however. In 1770 . . . Russians killed several Ainu who refused to pay tribute to their new masters. The next year, Ainu retaliates by ambushing traders . . . killing at least ten Russians in the process.” (Walker 202) “Similar to Anglo-American settler justifications for the conquest of Native American lands, or the so-called white man’s burden of European Empires, Japanese projected the conquest of Ainu lands through the lens of Confucian benevolent rule, or the need to rescue Ainu from their disease ridden lives. Indeed, providing medical assistance to Ainu proved one manifestation of Japanese control over Hokkaido. . . . Ainu understood smallpox to be a deity, and the fact that the Japanese could vanquish the divine airborne killer with the prick of an arm surely destabilized the Ainu pantheon. Japanese officials also encouraged the Ainu to assimilate to Japanese life, including learning the Japanese language.” (Walker 203) “Japanese policy shifted from Confucian ‘benevolent care’ to the colonial protection of evolutionary lagging Ainu.” (Walker 203) “This transition to protecting the Ainu signaled the beginning of policies designed to transform them - up to this point hunters, gatherers, and traders - into small-scale farmers. The Meiji policies of paternalism culminated in the Hokkaido former Aborigine Protection Act of 1899, which distributed . . . agricultural plots to Ainu.” The goal was to destroy Ainu society. (Walker 204) “Meanwhile, the Ainu, their population in shambles from smallpox, measles, influenza, and after the Meiji Restoration, tuberculosis, became a miserable people in desperate need of colonial care and civilizing. As Horace Capron (1804-1885), a Civil War veteran and foreign overseer of the development effort on Hokkaido remarked . . . the same difficulties . . . to civilize these people [the Ainu] which are met . . . with the North American Indians.” (Walker 205) Chitoshi Yanaga. Japan Since Perry . 1949. During the Meiji Restoration, northern Japan was underdeveloped and undefended. The Japanese were concerned about the Russians encroaching on Yezo, which they renamed Hokkaido in 1869. (Yanaga 59) The development of Hokkaido was a top priority, and Americans were recruited to lead the way. The main concern, though, was security and not economics. (Yanaga 59) “American influences have left an indelible imprint on Hokkaido.” Agriculture in Japan resembles rural American agriculture. ((Yanaga 59) Settlers to Hokkaido did not move there voluntarily. Whole communities were transplanted. Different fiefs were set up. Displaced samurai were among the settlers. However, those from southern Japan could not adjust to the harsh northern climate. (Yanaga 60) “In addition to the positions in the government . . . the land development program to help the samurai establish themselves in agriculture.” Samurai were given preferential in settling Hokkaido. (Yanaga 60)

Miko Peled. General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine . 2016. The following is from the Introduction by Alice Walker. Peled’s mother recalled the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe” which the Arabs use to describe the 1947-1948 war, which the Israelis describe as the War of Independence. For the Palestinians, Peled’s mother said, the Israeli army drove the Arabs out of their homes “in the hundreds of thousands . . . frequently looting and/or blowing up homes.” However, if the Arabs had nice homes, the Israelis kept those for themselves. “As the invaders moved in, the coffee . . . was sometimes still on the table, still hot, as the inhabitants were forced to flee.” (11) In the 1967 War, known as the Six Day War, the Israelis took more Arab land: the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank of the Jordan River, from Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, respectively. Israel claimed its very existence was threatened by General Nasser’s military movements on the Sinai Peninsula. But recent research by Israeli historians has found that the Israeli “generals knew that the Egyptian army was too weak at the time to pose a military threat to Israel, [Peled’s father, Mattityahu] and his fellow officers carried out their plan to attack and destroy Egypt as a military power.” (11) Matti Peled was upset at the treatment of the Palestinians even before the Six-Day War and began to look at his own country as an oppressor. He learned Arabic and became a professor of Arabic Literature in Israel. (12) Miko Peled spends much of his time trying to “raise funds . . .  to ship 1,280 wheelchairs to those maimed and made invalids in Palestine and Israel.” (12) Miko Peled’s transformation to an anti-Zionist was slow. Although influenced by his father, the death of his niece by suicide bombers in 1997 traumatized him. Smadar was 13 years old. (19) Peled’s grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katznelson, was supposed to be the first minister of health in the new state of Israel. However, there was a fight for who would be prime minister between the charming, reasonable, diplomatic Chaim Weizmann and the “militant and uncompromising” David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion won. (30) Dr. Avraham Katznelson joined the government as it was “the first independent Jewish government in more than 2,000 years.” He would lead Israel’s United Nations delegation and later be ambassador to Scandinavia. (30) Peled’s mother taught him “to be a Zionist, but not by being dogmatic.” (33)” The two most prominent men in her life, her father and her husband, dedicated their entire lives to the cause of Zionism, and she shared their stories with me throughout my life.” (33) His grandmother left Russia after the Russian Revolution. She took a train that stopped in Turkey, “where Jews could wait for the British authorities to issue them permits to enter Palestine.” She would later marry a man who had planned to leave Palestine. (36) His grandmothers did not like each other. However, “they represent two aspects of the Zionist pioneers: One, an educated Jewish woman with a strong sense of social hierarchy who made it in early twentieth century Europe, and then lent her talents and education to the Zionist enterprise. The other, a working-class woman whose world, the world of the Jewish shtetl, had come to an end and who ended up participating in the Zionist project as a laborer and as a mother, which, in those days, in the height of socialism, was as noble as a position as one could hold.” (38) Peled’s mother refused to take a Palestinian family’s home in the 1948 war, saying, “That I should take the home of a family that may be living in a refugee camp? The home of another mother? Can you imagine how much they must miss their home?” She stayed with her mother. She was ashamed of the Israelis who looted Palestine homes with beautiful rugs and furniture. “I don’t know how they could do it.” (46). She would have had a “beautiful, spacious home for a family in a choice neighborhood in Jerusalem, and at no expense.” Miko Peled heard this story many times growing up. (46) In 1953, Moshe Sharett became prime minister. In 1955, Ben-Gurion returned to politics and became defense minister. He and Army Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan planned to attack Egypt. Sharett opposed attacking Egypt, believing it would cause “an unnecessary all-out war.” Ben-Gurion returned as Prime Minister and fired Sharett who was viewed “as the last bastion of moderation.” (48) Ben-Gurion made a “secret pact with France and Britain to attack Egypt.” The following one-sided war saw Israel conquer the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. The “Sinai Campaign” lasted one week. “Just as Ben-Gurion and Dayan had anticipated, it was a devastating blow to the Egyptian army.” (48) Lt. Col. Matti Peled, Miko’s father, became military governor of the Gaza Strip. “This was a defining role for him, and it influenced his entire life.” (48) Matti Peled’s orders for the Gaza Strip mimicked those of British rule and this was uncomfortable for him having fought the British in 1948. (48) Looking at his father’s papers in the Israeli archives, Miko Peled found his father “unyielding critical of his superiors and the established military in general.” (49) Matti Peled learned that he knew nothing about the Palestinians. (49) But he did find out that the Gazans “were not seeking vengeance for the hardship we caused them, nor did they wish to get rid of us. They were realistic and pragmatic and wanted to be free.” (50) In the early 1960s, Israel began developing nuclear weapons. (51) Toward the mid-1960s 1960s, General Matti Peled believed another war would break out. He listened to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and other Arab leaders.  “Nasser expelled the United Nations peacekeeping forces that had been monitoring the cease-fire between the two countries from the Sinai Peninsula. He sent Egyptian troops across the Suez Canal and into the demilitarized Sinai Peninsula. He threatened to blockade the straits of Titan and not permit Israeli ships to proceed toward the Israeli port city of Eilat.” This violated the two countries’ cease-fire, and the Israeli army called for war.  They wanted to strike Egypt preemptively. The Israeli cabinet wanted to consider it, and the arguments were fierce. General Matti Peled told all those present that “in no uncertain terms, the Egyptians needed a year and a half or two years to ready for a full-scale war. The other generals agreed that the Israeli army was prepared and that this was the time to strike another devastating blow.” (54) General Peled added that Nasser continued his warlike talk because he didn’t think Israel would attack. (54) The continued impasse between the Israeli Army General Staff and the cabinet caused much tension. One concern General Peled gave was that the Israeli economy suffered with reservists called up for a prolonged period. “The army morale is high, and we will be victorious whether we strike today or in three weeks.” However, the Israeli economy can’t wait. General Peled scolded Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. “Why must this army, which had never lost in battle, endure such an insult by the cabinet?” This became known as the General’s Coup. (54) Nevertheless, the cabinet waited for diplomacy. (55) In 1953, Moshe Sharett invited then Lt. Col. Matti Peled to speak to visiting American Jews and told them that the Israeli army “is preparing for war in order to complete the conquest of the Land of Israel and to push Israeli’s eastern border to its natural location on the banks of the Jordan River.” (58) The Israelis viewed their victory in the 1967 Six Day War as the “complete return of the historic Eretz Yisrael after 2,000 years to Jewish hands.” (59) While punishing Egypt for violating the ceasefire agreement was one thing taking the Golan Heights and the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip “was never part of any official plan.” (59) After the war, at a meeting of the Israeli general staff, General Matti Peled “spoke of the unique chance the victory offered Israel to solve the Palestinian problem once and for all. . . . Now we have a chance to offer the Palestinians a state of their own. . . . holding onto the West Bank, and the people who lived in it was contrary to Israel’s long-term strategy of building a secure Jewish democracy with a stable Jewish majority.” Maintaining these territories “would turn the Jewish state into an increasingly brutal occupying power and eventually into a bi-national state.” (59-60) “In 1973, Prime Minister Golda Meir . . . claimed that, before 1967, she had never heard of the Palestinian people and that they were somehow invented and had no real national identity - and therefore could have no national claims to the land of Palestine. . . . my father [retired General Matt Peled] immediately wrote a scathing reply to Golda’s speech . . . How do people in the world refer to the population that resides in the West Bank? What were the refugees of 1948 called prior to their exile? . . . in her capacity and then as foreign minister, how did she refer to these people? . . . Truly amazing! (68-69) Overall, the Israelis did not receive General Matti Peled’s lectures well. (69) General Peled concluded, “If we want to end terrorism, we must end the occupation and make peace.” (70) He expressed concern “for the nature of the Jewish democracy, and he knew that the occupation would destroy the moral fiber of society and of the IDF.” (70) “Extremist Jewish groups, most of whom had not served a single day in uniform,” threatened the retired general with death. (75) For himself, Miko Peled admits he has a “big mouth.” (93) Immediately following the Six-Day War, Israel built settlements in the Sinai, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and Gaza. “The reasons . . . from Messianic to security - related to the fact that it was a profitable enterprise for many businesses.” (106) Miko Peled followed his father’s “more liberal views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Distance developed between him and his Israeli and Jewish friends. He found that most Israelis were becoming “chauvinistic and constantly shifting to the right.” (132) “American Jews, for the most part, wanted to believe that Israel was good and the Arabs were bad.” (132) Contrary to President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s criticism of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's condemnation of the latter as not wanting peace and that Barak compromised more than Arafat, Miko Peled writes, “For the sake of peace, he [Arafat] was willing to give up the dream of all Palestinians to return to their homes and their land in Palestine. . . . He was ready to establish an independent Palestinian state in the West West Bank and Gaza - which make up only 22 percent of the Palestinian homeland - with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital.” (134) Miko Peled cites Israeli journalist Raviv Duiker’s writing in his book, Harakiri: Ehud Barak - the Failure , “It was clear that what the Israelis had demanded at Camp David was tantamount to total Palestinian surrender.” (134) Miko Peled learned the Palestinian point of view of the 1948 war. For Miko Peled, this would be the world upside down. He was told, “The Palestinians had barely 10,000 fighters, but the Haganah and the other Jewish militias combined were triple that number if not more. So when the Jews attacked, the Palestinians never had a chance. That was the most outrageous version of history I had ever heard: that the fighting forces of the Jewish militias in 1948 were superior to the Arabs and that the Jews attacked.” (140) Miko’s political science brother confirmed this version of events. Prof. Yoav Peled of Tel Aviv University recommended books by Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, and Avi Shalom.” They are the “New Historians” rewriting “the history of the establishment of Israel.” (141) Miko Peled dismisses the ‘lad swap’ solution as insane. Why would Palestinians give up family land for something in the Negev? (164) Describing Gaza, Miko Peled describes a literal rate of 90%. (180) “During the days of the Roman Empire, Gaza was a center of learning and culture.” (180) While living in Japan, Miko Peled met Israeli tourists. An Israeli naval officer bragged about forcing Gaza fishermen off their boats and then blowing those boats up. Then, they forced the fishermen to count from one to one hundred while treading water, and when they were done, they started over again. They did this until the fishermen drowned. This was done to “teach the Arabs who was boss.” (182) Israel continually confiscated “valuable agricultural land and gave it to settlements. The settlers denied Palestinian access to water. Access to roads is denied to Palestinians so that commutes are ridiculously long.” (205-206) The Israelis describe areas as war zones. However, Miko writes, “A war means two armies engaged in battle engaged in battle. Is there another army present? Do they have tanks and warplanes? Are they well-armed? Surely you aren’t referring to the boys throwing rocks as an army?” Miko blamed this on the presence of the Israeli military. (206) “The overwhelming force of the Israeli army can make anyone feel hopeless. And the fact that the world does little for Palestinians can lead to a sense of helplessness.” (223) “The settlements and the facts on the ground had succeeded in erasing the West Bank as a viable area in which a Palestinian state could be established.” (244) Although Arab Jews brought a rich culture to Israel, they viewed them as inferior. They “were forced to give up their identity and their culture for fear of being viewed as Arabs.” (248) “The world Arab is frequently attached to adjectives such as filthy, or is synonymous with stupid, useless, or lazy.” (248) “Israel has systematically delegitimized any Palestinian leader who was unwilling to accept Israel’s right to total domination of the land and the discourse. This is the primary reason why so many Palestinian leaders have been imprisoned, exiled, or assassinated, and it is the reason Yasser Arafat spent his final days surrounded by Israeli tanks: refusal to accept Israeli superiority and the exclusivity of the Israeli narrative.” (250-251) “Israel created an entire bureaucracy with the sole purpose of making the lives of Palestinians unlivable so that they will ultimately have no choice but to leave.” (251)