"Two Hundred and Fifty Years After the American Colonists Broke Free of Empire, It's Time for a British Declaration of Independence"

"Iran desperately needs a fresh start. The theocracy symbolised by its assassinated supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has long ago had its day. Many, probably most, Iranians yearn passionately for an open, freer, more prosperous, pluralist, pro-western society. But this destructive, un-thought-through US-Israeli regression into the worst excesses of imperialist vandalism crushes hopes of peaceful change–the only kind that lasts–and hastens a collapse into warring camps. What may emerge is not a reborn, friendly Iran but a fractured country held hostage by a more brutal, paranoid, ever-threatening hardline rump regime embroiled in endless conflict with its people and the west."

Simon Tisdall at The Guardian writes that "Britain's enemy now is Donald Trump."

And Martin Gelin discusses the conclusion by the Varieties of Democracy Institute at Gothenburg University "that the US is hurtling towards autocracy at a faster rate than Hungary and Turkey."

"Has the Emotional Armature of an 11-Year-Old Boy"

"This is your 'peace president.' He tore up a painstakingly negotiated settlement that was working and whose demise, thanks to Trump, led to Iran getting back into the game of nuclear enrichment. Then—to his partial credit—he seemed to be involved in serious negotiations of his own. But then Netanyahu moved his queen aggressively across the board, and Trump didn't want to be stuck in back just playing around with pawns."

Michael Tomansky at The New Republic reacts to Donald Trump's bombing of Iran.

"A Caricature, Zombie History"

"I always wondered about the leftist intellectuals who supported Stalin, and those aristocratic sympathizers and peace activists who excused Hitler. Today's Hamas apologists and atrocity-deniers, with their robotic denunciations of 'settler-colonialism,' belong to the same tradition but worse: They have abundant evidence of the slaughter of old people, teenagers, and children, but unlike those fools of the 1930s, who slowly came around to the truth, they have not changed their views an iota. The lack of decency and respect for human life is astonishing: Almost instantly after the Hamas attack, a legion of people emerged who downplayed the slaughter, or denied actual atrocities had even happened, as if Hamas had just carried out a traditional military operation against soldiers. October 7 deniers, like Holocaust deniers, exist in an especially dark place."

Simon Sebag Montefiore at The Atlantic criticizes "the ideology of decolonization."

As does Adam Kirsch at The Wall Street Journal.

"And That's the Tragedy in a Nutshell"

"The Palestinians have two basic strategies: relentless anti-colonial-style violence on the one hand and international diplomatic and economic pressure on Israel on the other. It has not yet dawned on Palestinians, nor on the foreign supporters eager to carry their banner, that the two strategies cancel each other out, that Hamas is constantly clarifying to Israelis the dire consequences of their acquiescence to international demands."

Haviv Rettig Gur at The Times of Israel reacts to the latest conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

"The Best Part of Man's Life Is His Childhood"

"From Main Street, U.S.A. and Frontierland 'as [the Western City] would have looked years ago,' with its 'colorful tramways, pulled by horses [that] traverse the main streets; outmoded taxis; affable, smiling policemen turn around, seemingly having just jumped out of a very old film; and just over there is a store where they sell everything from "revolvers" to bags of gold, gifts, and cowboy hats.' He then boards the train 'through a desert where skeletons and Indians look at you with their dead stares' before disembarking to get his ticket for the Mark Twain Riverboat and travel down the giant Mississippi River, remarking 'the ship is terrific, the river formidable.'"

Menachem Butler in Tablet discusses Elie Wiesel, who died today, on a 1957 trip to Disneyland.

"Further Down the Rabbit Hole"?

"When the ASA descends on Los Angeles this week, the conference will be tweeted, blogged and reported on as no ASA conference ever has been. That spotlight derives from notoriety, not esteem, and the attention will be on the politics, not the scholarship."


Thomas Doherty in the Los Angeles Times criticizes the American Studies Association.


Jim Downs in The Huffington Post responds.

Blues Sit-In Fantasy Runner

The Los Angeles Times reports the deaths of movie producer Saul Zaentz, athlete Eusébio, movie studio owner Run Run Shaw, writer Amiri Baraka, Reagan press secretary Larry Speakes, civil rights activist Franklin McCain, and former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"That Is So Different from What My Book Actually Says That I Have to Doubt Whether Mr. Romney Read It"

"Conversely, geographic advantages don’t guarantee permanent success, as the growing difficulties in Europe and America show. We Americans fail to provide superior education and economic incentives to much of our population. India, China and other countries that have not been world leaders are investing heavily in education, technology and infrastructure. They’re offering economic opportunities to more and more of their citizens. That’s part of the reason jobs are moving overseas. Our geography won’t keep us rich and powerful if we can’t get a good education, can’t afford health care and can’t count on our hard work’s being rewarded by good jobs and rising incomes."

Jared Diamond in The New York Times responds to Mitt Romney's comments in Jerusalem.

Damn Three Wind Beer Crowd

The Los Angeles Times reports the deaths of songwriter Richard Adler, actor Don Grady, Israeli politician Yitzhak Shamir, windsurfing pioneer Jim Drake, car designer Sergio Pininfarina, football player Ben Davidson, and actor Andy Griffith.

"More Peaceful, More Stable, and More Just"

"And that's why, two years ago in Cairo, I began to broaden our engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. I believed then-–and I believe now-–that we have a stake not just in the stability of nations, but in the self-determination of individuals. The status quo is not sustainable. Societies held together by fear and repression may offer the illusion of stability for a time, but they are built upon fault lines that will eventually tear asunder.
"So we face a historic opportunity. We have the chance to show that America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator."

The New York Times publishes President Obama's speech on the Middle East.

"A Parable about the Dangers of Utopianism"

"He grew up in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, witnessing revolutions and counter-revolutions. He was one of the first Zionist settlers in Palestine. He became a star in the Berlin of Sally Bowles' cabarets and a rising Adolf Hitler. He was jailed and nearly shot by Gen. Franco. He fled the Nazis through Casablanca, Morocco. He gave Albert Camus a black eye, George Orwell a holiday home, and Soviet communism an enema. He had sex with supermodel twins, took magic mushrooms with Timothy Leary*, and helped create Intelligent Design. Oh—and he was a rapist."

Johann Hari in Slate reviews Michael Scammell's Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic.

"A License to Dream and Act in a Noble Direction"

"Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided the entire humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a lord in heaven and believers on earth."

Thaindian News runs Nobelist Shimon Peres's letter of congratulation to new Nobelist Barack Obama.

John Milton Cooper in The New York Times compares Obama to Nobelist Woodrow Wilson.

Anti-Social Networks

"This is consistent with previous research on online communication, says Scott Caplan of the University of Delaware in Newark, who suspects that heavy users of sites such as Digg and Twitter may have similar characteristics. 'People who prefer online social behaviour tend to have higher levels of social anxiety and lower social skills,' he says."

Peter Aldhous in New Scientist explores research into who contributes to "community-curated" websites like Wikipedia..

"We Have Made You Into Nations and Tribes so That You May Know One Another"

"The issues that I have described will not be easy to address. But we have a responsibility to join together on behalf of the world we seek--a world where extremists no longer threaten our people, and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own, and nuclear energy is used for peaceful purposes; a world where governments serve their citizens, and the rights of all God's children are respected. Those are mutual interests. That is the world we seek. But we can only achieve it together."

Salon prints President Obama's speech in Cairo.

Shabbat Shalom

In The Nation, Avi Shlaim and Rashid Khalidi consider Israel during its sixtieth anniversary.

"The Monstrous and the Mundane"

"During the Cold War, Arendt's theories provided both comfort and powerful propaganda for conservatives in the West by suggesting that there was no difference between the Third Reich and the Soviet system—Eichmanns flourished under both. For the left, Arendt's 'banality of evil' model seemed to explain how government bureaucrats could operate weapons of mass destruction against civilians and how military men such as Army Lt. William Calley could follow orders and commit atrocities in Vietnam."

In the Los Angeles Times, David Cesarani of the University of London challenges the legacy of Adolf Eichmann's trial, which began forty-five years ago this month.