Crooked Media: Wilderness The Nightmare

Why did Democrats lose the 2016 election? The candidates, campaigns, and conditions that led to America’s worst person becoming president.

The Wilderness is a documentary from Crooked Media and Two-Up about the history and future of the Democratic Party. Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau tells the story of a party finding its way out of the political wilderness through conversations with strategists, historians, policy experts, organizers, and voters. In fifteen chapters, the series explores issues like inequality, race, immigration, sexism, foreign policy, media strategy, and how Democrats can build a winning majority that lasts.

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The Atlantic: Why Israel Fears Iran’s Presence in Syria

In some ways, Israel has never been more powerful. It boasts a close relationship with the Trump administration, a powerful and nuclear-armed military, and an air force capable of striking enemies hundreds of miles away. At the same time, it is a small country with limited infrastructure: It has one international airport, a handful of major power stations, and an electrical grid that Israeli experts have already warned is vulnerable to attack. [...]

Since Hezbollah’s last war with Israel in 2006, it has expanded its rocket and missile stockpile. With Iran’s help, its arsenal is also now far more technologically advanced. Israel’s missile-defense systems can counter some threats, but would likely be overwhelmed by the sheer number of rockets and missiles that Hezbollah can now fire. “In the event of a war, the Israeli population will absorb blows that it has not experienced in decades,” Ofer Zalzberg, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Israel and Palestine, told me. [...]

The damage done to Israel in another war will pale in comparison to the destruction wrought on Lebanon. Under a strategy outlined in 2008 that calls for the use of disproportionate force on any villages or neighborhoods in which Hezbollah operates, Lebanon would experience a level of destruction that “has not been seen since World War II,” one Israeli defense official was quoted in an International Crisis Group report as saying. “We will crush it and grind it to the ground.” [...]

Oren said Israel will be forced to target civilian areas where Hezbollah has positioned its rockets, and advocates declaring war on the Lebanese government in a future conflict. But he also worried that Israel could be setting itself up for a Pyrrhic victory. The gory images from Israeli strikes are going to be transmitted across the world, he worries, inflicting a serious diplomatic blow on Israel. “The battle that begins in Lebanon doesn’t end in Lebanon. The battle in Lebanon, if Hezbollah wins, ends in The Hague. And the goal there is the systematic wearing away, erosion of our legitimacy. Our right to defend ourselves, and ultimately our right to exist,” he said. “And I’ve got to tell you, honestly, they’re winning this war.”

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The Conversation: America looks hopeless – a lot like the ‘mother country’ once did

This is a useful way for Americans like me to consider our troubles abroad. But when it comes to our democracy’s problems at home, the closer parallel is with 18th century Britain, the “mother country” from which the United States broke away in 1776.

Britons of that time enjoyed many liberties unknown to their favourite bogeymen, the French. These freedoms had many roots, including the Magna Carta of 1215, the Bill of Rights from 1689 and various parts of English common law. Most Britons saw their country as God’s favourite and thanked their “Constitution” — a general term for established forms of law and government — for their rising glory. [...]

This alliance includes white voters who keep their traditional supremacy through gerrymandered districts, restrictive voting laws and mass incarceration of non-white people.

It also includes corporate interests that halt efforts to protect workers and the environment, to say nothing of sick, poor and elderly Americans. These plutocrats not only decide elections with their campaign contributions but also write legislation through their lobbyists.

As a now-famous study from 2014 empirically shows, majority needs and wishes in the United States have virtually no impact on public policy, regardless of which celebrity-candidate wins office. [...]

After all, the British Constitution of the 1700s held firm through much of the 1800s, despite the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution. It gave ground in periodic “Reform Acts” but otherwise kept democracy at bay. The people had to settle for their pride in the empire, their disdain for other countries, and their sense that, as Britons, they were at least free to start over in Canada or Australia or even the United States.

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ARTiculations: When Did Modern Architecture Actually Begin?

Did modern architecture really begin in the 1920s with the founding of the Bauhaus school? Perhaps. But perhaps the changing landscape of architectural practice and theory throughout the last 200 years is not as straight forward as it seems.

Independent: As Jews, we reject the myth that it's antisemitic to call Israel racist

The statement, which 40 Jewish groups from 15 different countries have signed, could not have been more timely. In the UK, the Labour Party is currently under pressure to adopt the full guidelines accompanying a definition of antisemitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). [...]

But genuine anti-racist principles surely lead us to criticise Israel for its many discriminatory policies, whether its segregated road network, its dual justice system, or the “Jewish nation state” bill passed on Wednesday, which entrenches ethnic inequality in law.

Perversely labelling critics of this racism “antisemitic” also silences Palestinians who object to Israel’s historic and ongoing takeover of their land.  [...]

On the contrary, we believe that by dangerously conflating opposition to Israel’s discriminatory policies with anti-Jewish racism, IHRA politicises and harms the fight against antisemitism as well as the struggle for justice for Palestinians.

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