Read Jane Jacobs' "Systems of Survival" to Understand Donald Trump

 

Jane Jacobs' 1992 "Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics" might explain Donald Trump's 2016 victory better than Steve Bannon's "Fourth Turning" or President Obama's "Arc of History."

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/read-jane-jacobs-systems-survival-understand-donald-trump-trump-jane-jacobs-obama-1544982292

Bannon and Frum Debate Trump's American Populism--in Canada

Steve Bannon and David Frum's Munk Debate from November 2nd was one of the stranger television shows that I have seen. Contra Frum, Bannon argued President Trump is a transformative figure in "the Fourth Turning" of American history (The Revolution, Civil War and New Deal were the other three). So the Obama Administration's end represented the exhaustion of one cycle, the Trump Administration the beginning of another.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/bannon-frum-debate-trump-american-populism-canada-trump-administration-populism--1544894974

The Unforgettable William Barr

Sometime in 1993, fate seated me next to former Attorney General William Barr on the Washington-NY shuttle. We spoke for about an hour about the recent tragic raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas which killed 76 people. He told me no one would have died if it had been properly handled. He knew because he supervised a similar raid at a prison in 1991--where everyone lived. I never forgot that conversation...

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/the-unforgettable-william-barr-william-barr-trump-waco-1544458494

President George H. W. Bush (1924-2018): Outspoken Foe of Political Correctness

President George H.W. Bush is memorialized as an American war hero and symbol of civility. However, Americans need to remember that opposition to Political Correctness is equally his legacy, declared in a May 4, 1991 University of Michigan commencement address.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/president-george-h-w-bush-1924-2018-outspoken-foe-political-correctness-george-h-w-bush-political-corr-1543682367

Chicago on the Nile

Dr. W. Raymond Johnson with Chicago House's collection of ancient Egyptian prints and drawings

The Oriental Institute's "Chicago House" in Luxor is a Monument to American Civilization in Egypt


Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/chicago-nile-egypt-flaubert-chicago-1543337623

Egypt Recovers From Arab Spring

Author at the Giza Mena House Hotel (Cairo)

A recent visit to the Pyramids showed Egyptian tourism recovering from civil strife and economic woes of the Arab Spring.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/egypt-recovers-arab-spring-egypt-pyramids-arab-spring-1543149285

Joseph Gelman Says American Jews Must Reject Politicization of Pittsburgh Massacre

Joseph Gelman with former Israeli President Shimon Peres

Following the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh last Saturday, Joseph Gelman urges the American Jewish community to reject politicization and instead work with people of goodwill across the political spectrum--including President Trump.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/joseph-gelman-urges-american-jews-reject-politicization-pittsburgh-massacre-trump-anti-semitism-hate-1541017509

William Woodward's Natural Beauty

For Woodward, artistic beauty isn’t merely a social construct. It is actually inherent in human nature. In fact, it is found within our DNA. The pull of beauty is eternal, and from the cave-dwellers of Lascaux, to the cliff-dwellers of Washington, people commune with nature via art.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/william-woodward-natural-beauty-art-realism-beauty-1540604741

The Palestinian-"Caravan" Connection

Posted at http://www.pueblosinfronteras.org/members.html:

Palestine and Latin America: Marches for Justice meet

On Tuesday, April 10, the Mexican Coordination for Palestine (CORSOPAL) and the #WorldwithoutWalls delegation handed over a letter from the Palestinian Stop the Wall Campaign to the Via Crucis March of Migrants as it arrived in Mexico City.
At the same moment that Palestinians in Gaza started the #GreatReturnMarch, migrants from all over Central America, in particular Honduras, started their march towards the US border, militarized by the Wall of Infamy. The letter highlights the connections between the people struggles as well as the complicity between the powers that oppress them.

From Palestine, as part of a people whose majority is refugees and displaced persons because of Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of our lands, we want to extend our solidarity.

We want to tell you that we are in struggle together with you.

We salute your March of the over 1500 migrants that challenge US racist and exclusivist migration policies that stop the people from crossing borders, depriving them of their basic rights to freedom of movement and rights as refugees. We recognize that most of you have been forced to leave your homes because of US foreign policies and oppressive political regimes backed by the United States and, we add, Israel as the one state that has since the seventies until today militarily and politically backed each and every coup, dictatorship and anti-peoples regime in Latin America.

As Palestinians we feel deeply connected to your experiences.

70 years ago, our Nakba (catastrophe) began when Israel established itself on the mass ethnic cleansing of our people and over half of our people have been, often at gunpoint, forced out of their homes and their lands for Israel to establish its apartheid regime. Since 1948 when entire villages were fleeing Israeli military aggression and massacres, until today, Israeli policies of occupation and colonization continue to expel our people by taking our lands and destroying our communities. Israeli repression, including ongoing invasions, night raids and large scale incarceration, aims to make live impossible. Half of the Palestinian male population passes at least once through Israeli prisons.

Israel has built an up to 8 meter high Wall around Gaza to besiege its population and around the West Bank villages and towns our people so that today we are allowed to access and use only 13% of our historic homeland.

Like you, we know the Via Crucis of long marches.

As you are marching to claim your rights as migrants, in Palestine the people of Gaza, the large majority of them refugees expelled from their homes 70 years ago, have started their Long March of Return. Every Friday tens of thousands of people are marching to the militarized border of Gaza that is part of Israel’s wall structure that imposes since over a decade the brutal siege on Gaza. People demand an end to the siege and occupation, they demand their UN sanctioned Right of Return. They demand an end to Israeli apartheid. Regular marches to the military checkpoints at the exits of our cities and Israel’s up to 8 meter high wall that is ghettoising our villages in the occupied West Bank are ongoing as well.

We may be geographically far away from your march but our oppressors are united in the same criminal and cruel policies, mutually supporting each other.
Israeli walls are the example for the US administration when promoting the Wall of Infamy at the US-Mexico border. Not by chance the same Israeli companies build both walls. Not by chance the same drones tested on our people in Gaza are being used to militarize the southern border of Mexico to comply with US dictates.

While many of you have been driven from your homes in Honduras by Juan Orlando Hérnandez regime, Israel has signed a military agreement with JOH. Israel has invited him as the first foreign president to participate in the celebrations of Israel’s 70 years of establishment on the ethnic cleansing of our people, ironically then cancelling the invitation because of human rights abuses for which Israel has provided assistance since the coup against Manuel Zelaya.

Just as Donald Trump has ordered a military troops to be deployed at the US-Mexico Wall to defend the US racist and exclusionary policies against your legitimate claims for rights, Israel has stationed its military and snipers behind the border wall to Gaza against unarmed civilians. Over 30 people have been killed so far by Israeli snipers inside Gaza, thousands injured while the international community remains in complicit silence. The US veto against any condemnation of Israel’s ongoing massacre of civilians at the #GazaReturnMarches aims to protest as well its own criminal policies. Yet, Palestinian popular mobilization will persist and grow.

We know that we share a struggle for our rights and dignity, for the right to freedom of movement, for the right to live on our lands and homes, for the right to self-determination.

For us all existence is resistance.

We know that our struggles united can achieve a #WorldwithoutWalls and Justice, Freedom and Equality for all.

In solidarity,
Palestinian Grassroots Stop the Wall Campaign

The Khashoggi Affair: Business As Usual For Saudi Arabia

Jamal Khashoggi

Adnan Khashoggi 

Dr. James Kurth

Pundits have declared the gruesome death of Jamal Khashoggi an international crisis, but one authority on international politics disagrees. Dr. James Kurth of Swarthmore College confronted Uncle Adnan Khashoggi in 1977 and remains sanguine about the future of Saudi-American relations. He believes assassinations are normal in the Arab world, advises the Trump administration to do nothing to stop them, and resist the siren call of "Democracy Building."

Read the whole thing at TheLATEST.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/the-khashoggi-affair-business-as-usual-for-saudi-arabia-saudi-arabia-jamal-khashoggi-i-1540003328

Eva Brann--The Imaginative Conservative

In 2015, Dr. Eva Brann, a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, published a 12-point essay titled “Reflections on Imaginative Conservativism” declaring: “The imaginative conservative’s practical project is survival without loss of soul.” After reading that, I ordered her book on the topic, "Then and Now," which begins with Herodotus. Still seeking to learn more, I went to Annapolis, to ask Dr. Brann in person how Imaginative Conservatism works....

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/eva-brann-the-imaginative-conservative-conservative-imagination-trump-1539384109

Tucker Carson's "Ship of Fools": How a Selfish Ruling Class is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution

Like Jordan Peterson, Tucker Carlson believes you should show that you can clean up your room before you “save the planet.” He holds views similar to Bill Clinton’s “Double Bubba” 1992 platform, calling for good jobs at good wages. But he says Democrats are now a Party of the Rich, whose liberal “meritocrats” became the “establishment” they pretended to despise.

Read the whole thing in TheLatest.com:  https://thelatest.com/tlt/tucker-carson-ship-of-fools-how-selfish-ruling-class-bringing-america-brink-revolution-democrats-ruling-class-trump-1538784201

The Trump Doctrine Promises to "Make the UN Great Again"

This week’s most important news took place on Monday in New York when President Trump unveiled his "Trump Doctrine" at the UN General Assembly, not in Washington over whether Brett Kavanaugh groped Christine Blasey Ford at a party some thirty-six years ago.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/the-trump-doctrine-promises-make-un-great-again-trump-united-nations-foreign-p-1538176137