History – Various Lands – education and deconstruction.com

Strongmen – BONUS POST

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, published in 2021. In this hodgepodge of a volume, the author described the traits and behaviors of a “strongman” through a few real-life examples of dictators of the past hundred years.

A strongman is a male leader who finds ways (that happen to be nefarious) to maximize and maintain his power; including: causing needless deaths and ruined lives in the forms of propaganda (repeated scapegoating, generating crises and other brainwashing techniques), waging war, engaging in sexual conquests, seeking political dominance and enriching himself, usually through looting resources from the territory or territories he rules.

In October 1922, in an Italy of about forty million people, approximately thirty thousand people comprising the Fascist Party appointed Mussolini as prime minister. In the next two decades, in order to rule by fear and force, Mussolini formed various political and military groups, and passed laws that violated human rights. He incited excessive violence, and had dissidents killed.

In July 1925, Mussolini pardoned all political criminals (those who would help him stay in power). But by 1926, he had run out of money. Fortunately for him, he had friends in high places. Thomas Lamont– his contact at the American financial institution, J.P. Morgan, arranged a loan of one hundred million dollars for him. At that time, Hitler actually looked up to Mussolini and eventually got friendly with him, in order to get mentored. By 1933, the German industrialists had fallen for Hitler’s populist rhetoric.

In 1965, Mobutu, who engaged in drugs and arms sales, (with the help of the CIA) came to power in Zaire. He, along with a number of other dictators, had been war heroes, so they had military backing. Beginning in 1969, oil money allowed Gaddafi to give his government a socialistic bent– funding Libyans’ education, housing and other basic needs.

In 1994, Italy’s Berlusconi controlled very nearly all the messaging heard and seen by his people. He crafted laws to: give himself a get-out-of-jail-free card, and his businesses, to weasel out of legal and financial trouble. His propaganda screamed that immigrants were criminals. Gaddafi and Berlusconi (who should have been enemies) became besties– keeping their friends close and their enemies closer. Libya got weapons from Italy, and Italy got oil from Libya.

In Trump’s United States, “Women advance their careers by making it easier for the leader and his inner circle to harm other women.” Another strongman technique Trump uses is to put his assets in foreign bank accounts. In 2014, Eric Trump said, “We [Trump Organization] don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need from Russia.”

Like Berlusconi, Trump and his media outlet, Fox News, have repeatedly, emphatically smeared immigrants as criminals, and he has used his military, ICE, to detain or deport them. The author named locations of various detention camps that had inhumane conditions: in Florida– Homestead, and in Texas– Clint, McAllen, Rio Grande, and El Paso del Norte.

In sum, once the strongman has stolen all he can get from his citizens, his next tricks are to negotiate a peace treaty and schedule elections.

Read the book to learn much more about how the above-named and a few others have used strongman tactics to turn into not-so-benign dictators.

ENDNOTE: Here’s a song that describes Trump’s strongman tactics.

MODERN STRONGMAN

sung to the tune of “Modern Woman” with apologies to Billy Joel and to whomever else the rights may concern.

You see Trump on the idiot box touting his high-tech war-toys of his cronies’ design.

With his continual cruel smears he aggravates the tension. Tries to save face while losing his mind.

Now Trump’s in trouble. He fired all the intellectuals. He always figures voters aren’t very smart.

Or maybe he hopes his hype covers up his conflicts. Oh, he’s got to use PR tricks ’cause his wrongdoing’s off the charts.

He always puts on an ACT of ranting-frat-boy modern strongman. And he’s an old fascist man. He understands just what he’s doing. He’s a modern strongman.

His mean streak is exceptionally unprofessional. He’s got a lot of cockiness, it’s easy to see. You don’t want to be rude but you get so furious when he’s so injurious to American democracy.

He’s got bile and he’s got billionaires’ money and lots of attorneys so his-foes, he quickly disarms. His slow rise means you may not realize, YOU’RE jeopardized by his gradual harm.

He’s got his plan of attack and got the power-play knack of modern strongman. And he’s an old fascist man. He understands just what he’s doing. He’s a modern strongman.

The king won’t die. There is no president. He says he loves you but he treats you unkind. In the morning he detains you. You’re accused by your neighbors. It’s a cagey situation for an old fascist guy.

Times have changed, and you cry in vain, lately. He’s become extreme in his bad attitude. His cock-and-bull just used to be for kicks. But now he controls your politics. After 2026, you might get a clue.

You can’t relax and face the facts of modern strongman. And he’s an old fascist man, he forces your hand in the things he’s doing.

He’s a modern strongman. He’s a modern strongman.

He’s got the sociopathic zip that allows the grip of the modern strongman.

Totally Unofficial

The Book of the Week is “Totally Unofficial, the Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin” edited by Donna-Lee Frieze, published in 2013.

Born in 1900 in territory that was alternately Lithuania and eastern Poland, Lemkin was raised among four peasant-farming families who grew clover and rye, and herded sheep and goats. He enjoyed an idyllic early childhood of nature and horseback-riding.

After earning a law degree, he worked for the government in Poland, obtaining higher and higher fancy titles. Even so, he was strangely obedient when, in early September, 1939, the (German occupied) government ordered all able-bodied men to leave Warsaw immediately. He got on a train, which was bombed. He walked to the forest in the countryside.

Later on, Lemkin did use his connections, however, to emigrate to a less dangerous place. In Vilnius in Lithuania, in autumn 1939, he spoke with a Russian soldier whose mentality was: The Western (Britain and France) Allies would fight the German military until they destroyed one another. Then the Russians would come and take over. Americans would sell arms to the Allies so that the Allies would have more resources than the Germans.

The German mentality was: Only the land of any territory Germany occupied, not the people, could be Germanized. So in October 1939, it (along with Russia) proceeded to deport all the Poles from Poland. This plan was written in Hitler’s 1924 book, Mein Kampf. The reason it took so long for the civil Europeans and Americans with sufficient power to head off the danger, was that they didn’t believe anyone could be so barbaric.

Earlier international agreements set out rules of engagement with regard to war. In general, destroying enemies’ military and fighting-infrastructure was believed to be justified. Nevertheless, the documents failed to mention persecuting and killing of civilians of a specific group. Lemkin felt this instance which he called genocide, needed to be codified, because early in the war, he had witnessed it in his native land. In summer 1942, he was unable to convince FDR of the urgency of making genocide an international crime.

Finally, in November 1946, Lemkin spoke with all kinds of diplomats when the world was ready to sit down at the bargaining table and form the United Nations. Panama, Cuba, India and global women’s organizations initially agreed to sign his resolution, by then called the Genocide Convention.

Still, there were years of arguments over every word, resistance and the usual political shenanigans. For, postwar, some arrogant government officials (such as French intellectuals and the British attorney general) were angry that their country had been taken down a notch in world status, so they argued that a Genocide Convention wasn’t necessary. The Nuremberg judgment had already outlawed war crimes, during times of war.

Lemkin explained that even in peacetime, human nature would dictate that a handful of evil people would acquire significant power to hate on others; thus, the need for a reminder in writing that the international community should put the kibosh on such behavior.

Read the book to learn much more about the trials and tribulations Lemkin experienced in trying to get the world to understand and commit to his ideology.

Between Two Fires

The Book of the Week is “Between Two Fires, Truth, Ambition and Compromise in Putin’s Russia” by Joshua Yaffa, published in 2020.

In this volume, the author described various workers in entertainment, tourism, war, religion and humanitarian aid– under Vladimir Putin’s reign. In order to avoid getting arrested or worse, the subjects needed to play well with the government, which funded a large percentage of their activities. Each of their stories was chronologically disorganized, wordy and redundant, but the author clearly conveyed their plights and mentalities.

Putin came to power when Boris Yeltsin resigned at the beginning of the year 2000. Shortly thereafter, Putin’s government took over the media, forcing a mogul (whose TV channel could reach as much as 98% of Russian households which had a TV set) to sell his media empire to the State (the Russian government).

In the late 1990’s, the site of a closed Russian prison called Perm-36 was turned into a museum whose curators tried to inform the public about crushing oppression suffered by Cold-War Era Soviet dissidents there. After Putin had come to power, German university students who believed in the cause of democratic freedoms, volunteered to do maintenance work on the site.

However, they got offended when a former prisoner was forgiving and even behaved in a friendly manner toward a former guard, who had become a security officer at the museum. The German’s were “bound by strict, categorical norms, an ethical prism born [sic] of Germany’s admirable– if often inflexible– attitude toward totalitarianism and those who serve it. A political prisoner and his guard should not shake hands, and from that flows a whole way of seeing the world.”

The former prisoner explained: The guard had been young and therefore impressionable, easily brainwashed into rationalizing that he was simply following orders as a messenger, putting prisoners into solitary confinement. The guard didn’t directly kill anyone; he was subjected to the same drab environment and fed the same food as the prisoners.

On the immorality / morality spectrum, no one’s perfect. Nevertheless, it appears that, in human history, the kinds of people who are evil– on the extremely immoral end– have become dictatorial world leaders in disproportionate numbers.

The author spoke with a local “fixer” in the war in Chechnya in the 2010’s. She served as messenger, bailed dissidents (anti-government rebels) out of jail, and aided journalists covering the war. She had adopted a kind of pragmatism– cooperating with the administration of the Soviet-appointed leader of Chechnya– even though he and his ilk brought genocide, atrocities and crushing oppression to her people.

For approximately the first decade of Putin’s dictatorship, ordinary Russians’ living standards improved due to modernization, plentiful oil, and an increase in consumer goods in the stores. They also enjoyed religious liberalization (except for Western Christian and Catholic worshipers– those denominations competed too much for congregants with the Russian Orthodox Church). Freedom rang until it didn’t, as Putin’s hunger for, and amassing of power got him “reelected” as supreme leader in 2012. From then on, under Putin– Russia’s, Crimea’s and Ukraine’s leadership became Stalinist all over again.

At any rate, like the United States media, the Russian media has its trivial distractions. A scandal, which the State investigated for two years, erupted when a contemporary art museum’s curator allowed an Azeri exhibit to feature children’s dolls in gruesome positions.

After a while, employees in many workplaces, couldn’t guess what would spark an inquiry from the authorities. There were neither written nor spoken rules on acceptable behavior. Of course, spies were everywhere, ready to arbitrarily wield power.

Read the book to learn much more about various workers in the Putin years.

Children of Radium

The Book of the Week is “Children of Radium, A Buried Inheritance” by Joe Dunthorne, published in 2025. The morbidly curious author wrote this book after engaging in “roots tourism” to learn about his (Jewish) great-grandfather’s and grandmother’s lives in Germany and Ankara in Turkey before, during and after WWII.

In the 1930’s, the author’s grandmother grew up in Oranienburg in Germany, the most radioactive town in the country. There was a chemical weapons factory there, at which her father (named Seigfried) worked as a creator and tester into the mid-1930’s. Just around that time, German schoolchildren were supplied with gas masks and taught how to protect themselves from wartime air-contaminants. The chemicals from the factory were disposed of through burying, burning or pouring into a river. One of the chemicals was phosgene, which smells like a freshly mowed lawn. In 1935, Siegfried’s family moved to Ankara, but he continued to test gas masks there.

In 1937, the Turkish government purchased chemical weapons from Germany to ethnically cleanse residents in Dersim in the mountains in eastern Turkey. Over the course of two years, the roughly thirteen thousand people who died presumably served as the Nazis’ preliminary test-case of the mass murder of the Jews a few years later. Toward the end of the war, in August 1944, it seemed Turkey had an attack of conscience (or else its strategic interests changed!)– because it broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, and detained a couple of hundred non-Jewish refugees, but granted continued liberty to war-refugees whose passports said they were Jewish.

From the 1990’s into the dawn of the twenty-first century, the author read his family’s documents archive, met with some neighbors of his ancestors, and went to see whether his family members’ homes still existed. Most didn’t. The Russians destroyed the aforesaid factory after the war. But decades later, an entrepreneur bought the site (which was still a toxic waste dump, consisting of 26,000 tons of poisons), and built a nightclub and swimming pool on it, complete with imported controlled substances.

In the 1990’s(!), there were still homes getting destroyed and people getting killed by unexploded bombs, and homes getting built on radioactive sand dating back to WWII.

Read the book to learn much more about the author’s adventures in learning about Seigfried’s state of mind as a Jew who was (possibly initially unwittingly) aiding in the German war effort, his activities, and those of his other family members.

Zbig

The Book of the Week is “Zbig, The life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America’s Great Power Prophet” by Edward Luce, published in 2025. In this slightly sloppily edited tome, the author threw in the kitchen sink on every historical event that occurred during Brzezinski’s lifetime. Yes, Brzezinski was a major influencer of certain events, but such brief descriptions are overwhelming (or tedious and boring!) for young students of history. For more knowledgeable readers, this is a reference book.

Anyway, Brzezinski’s ancestors were royal family members in what is now Poland. Brzezinski was born in 1928 in Warsaw, but spent his early childhood in various European countries. In autumn 1938, his family fled Europe for Montreal, Canada. He became a Canadian citizen in 1951, and an American citizen in 1958.

Academically, Brzezinski was a genius. He won all sorts of awards. Together, he and Carl Friedrich of Harvard’s Department of Government theorized about totalitarianism of the U.S.S.R. In their book, they wrote of its traits: a monopoly on violence and communications, a majority group who truly believes in their ideology which is imposed officially, ruling by fear and force via law enforcement, and a government-directed economy. But the U.S.S.R. didn’t have a majority group of true believers; it was comprised of diverse territories and peoples. Sounds familiar.

In the second half of twentieth century, Brzezinski’s counterpart turned out to be Henry Kissinger, president Nixon’s foreign-policy sidekick. Kissinger had been born in Europe, had a foreign accent in the United States, was multilingual, and was enjoying a brilliant career. When Brzezinski saw what Kissinger had achieved, he realized he himself had a chance to do the same. He did, as president Jimmy Carter’s foreign-policy sidekick.

After the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, the CIA claimed that Khrushchev said the U.S.S.R. would economically catch up to the United States by 1970. Kissinger agreed with the CIA, that that would happen. Brzezinski personally visited the U.S.S.R. and saw that it was in decline. His writings contradicted the prevailing Cold War nonsense.

It was unclear whether the CIA was extremely incompetent in its intelligence-gathering, or was lying in order to incite Cold War animosity among the American masses. Journalists would call such dishonesty, “disingenuous” but nowadays, the public is wise to propaganda such as that. There is hyper-awareness of the general conditions of every country of the world.

Brzezinski became obsessed with convincing those around him that the world should simply let the U.S.S.R. dig its own grave. In 1972, he, along with a few other alpha males with hubris syndrome, founded the Trilateral Commission. It was a nonpartisan think tank that contemplated the geopolitics of the future. The opinions the Trilateral Commission expressed were perceived as evil in different ways on both sides of the political spectrum. That might have been intentional. Currently, all think-tanks are partisan, but there is still this kind of super-rich boys’ club running the United States.

Kissinger, knowing journalists find it easier to write stories about colorful characters who make foreign-policy rather than write stories about complicated foreign-policy issues, played the media. He stroked their egos. Brzezinski accused him of flip-flopping, but the two maintained a relationship of healthy disagreement and civil discourse; they kept the drama going to stay in the headlines in order to stay relevant.

Read the book to learn much, much more about Brzezinski and his times.

The cliche is true: The more things change, the more they stay the same. In the last forty years, three presidents of the United States have become senile while in office: Ronald Reagan, Joseph Biden and Donald Trump. Here’s a song about that, and other universal political conundrums.

EVERYTHING IS CYCLICAL

sung to the tune of “Everything is Beautiful” with apologies to Ray Stevens and to whomever else the rights may concern.

A politician loves his flock of voters,

all the voters of his world.

He’s always ready to fight.

He cares nothing for wrong or right.

A politician loves his flock of voters in his world.

Everything’s political, in the current leaders’ reign.

In the last forty years in America,

three prezzes covered up their senile brains.

Everything’s cyclical, in its own way. It’s human psychology.

The pendulum’s gonna swing the other way.

The voter is in a bind, as backroom deals he cannot see.

We must prepare for what’s in the minds, of our leaders who say we’re free.

At every election, the hypocrites are standing by.

You know candidates’ resentments smolder.

It’s time to take action on ethics and grow up.

Honest stakeholders need to get bolder.

Everything’s political, in the current leaders’ reign.

In the last forty years in America,

three prezzes covered up their senile brains.

Everything’s cyclical, in its own way. It’s human psychology.

The pendulum’s gonna swing the other way.

We shouldn’t care about Trump’s unruly hair, or his apish orange skin. We must focus on his crimes and make sure they don’t happen again.

We need to work together now. Dictatorship is out. Fine.

Stop wasting time on trivial distractions, my friend, and pay liars no mind.

Everything’s political, in the current leaders’ reign.

In the last forty years in America,

three prezzes covered up their senile brains.

Everything’s cyclical, in its own way. It’s human psychology.

The pendulum’s gonna swing the other way.

Everything’s political, in the current leaders’ reign.

In the last forty years in America…

His Majesty’s Airship

“The New York Post wrote, ‘No more funds of American taxpayers [should] be squandered on these useless gasbags.’ “

The above is NOT a comment about the 2025 New York City mayoral candidates, but is a 1935 comment in reaction to the series of American airship crashes that killed hundreds of people.

The Book of the Week is “His Majesty’s Airship, The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine” by S.C. Gwynne, published in 2023. In this sloppily edited, chronologically disordered, wordy, redundant (but suspenseful) volume, the author recounts the history of airships through the late 1930’s.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the Germans racked up significant construction- and flying-expertise with regard to airships with rigid frames. However, they had an abysmal safety record. They papered that over with jingoistic propaganda. The 1910’s saw a few conditions established to make airship flights less risky: flying only in summer and in clear weather with only light winds.

There was a high risk of fire because the hydrogen that filled the airships is easily combustible with just one spark. Helium is less so, but was expensive and difficult to obtain or make, and the Americans controlled the small quantity that was easily accessible.

The German government got the idea that in the event of a war, it could destroy cities at night via airships much more efficiently than it could with ground troops. In WWI, its submarines were actually more effective, because Britain wised up quickly– training searchlights on the airships, and shooting them into fireballs. By 1917, warplanes had become superior to airships, even with their mechanical problems.

Anyway, the author went off on a tangent, detailing the life-histories of a few different royal family members– main characters in the airships story. One such character was Lord Christopher Birdwood Thomson. Beginning in spring 1924, he persuaded the British government to execute his big idea of contracting with a company to make airships a fun, efficient form of global, public transportation.

The author tossed around the term “socialism” but did not elaborate. He described two competing British airship projects; one as capitalist, and the other as socialist. Here is a clarification (more details of which can be found in this blog’s post, “The Last Idealist” about Norman Thomas, in the “Politics – Systems” category):

With SOCIALISM, the people collectively own entities, and share and share alike. These can be profit-seeking businesses; or the government can own entities that provide essential services– health, education, welfare and large public transportation entities– that should not be profit-seeking (but some of their subcontractors are, anyway).

With COMMUNISM, the government owns profit-seeking entities (businesses) in whole or in part (as in the former Soviet Union and China). So yes, these include public-private partnerships in which there are clearly outrageous conflicts of interest that result in patronage and profiteering. So, arguably, the former Soviet Union and China have both Socialism and Communism to a large degree. The U.S. is not far behind anymore.

Furthermore, in America, the super-rich who pay no income tax, salve their consciences through philanthropy, which allows them to propagandize that they’re helping the poor. BUT income tax revenues are pooled so that they could end up getting spent on anything in the political budget. The super-rich specifically choose where to donate their money– whom to help, and it is a tiny percentage of poor people who are helped, compared with the number who are helped if money is provided through income tax!

Anyway, read the book to learn the outcome of the flight of R101 (hint: a large, expensive project run by alpha males with hubris syndrome– in which Darwin award candidates partake– rarely ends well) plus lots more historical background that explains why rigid airships are a thing of the past.

As is well known, the American government has been a large, expensive project run mostly by alpha males with hubris syndrome. Given the current overwhelming influences of money and sophisticated messaging via global, sophisticated communications technology, individuals need not even be physically present anymore to run the government. Like Elon Musk, they can be a mastermind of national policies in absentia. Here’s what Musk is singing now.

AMERICA

sung to the tune of “Africa” with apologies to Toto and to whomever else the rights may concern.

See my influence echoing on the Right.

These are the results of our secret conversations.

I and Trump pretended to have a fight.

Withdrawal from D.C. has let me discreetly plot to save my nation.

I learned from my old man along the way,

looking to amass resources to impose my brand of supremacy.

I turn to forceful people for-pay.

Scan the whole world, is I all have to DO.

It won’t take a lot to make my dreams come true.

My money has such power, I can lord it over you.

I act behind-the-scenes in America.

Trump’s taking this time to do the things we always pla-a-a-anned. ooh ooh

We reach out to our friends on the Right,

and we’ve grown prosperous, assisted by our hegemonic companies.

I know I’m doing what is right, sure as I am aiming to gradually rid the White House of democracy.

I need world conquest, deep inside.

Priming the pump for the great times to come.

It won’t take a lot to make my dreams come true.

My money has such power, I can lord it over you.

I act behind-the-scenes in America.

Trump’s taking this time to do the things we always pla-a-a-anned. ooh ooh

Scan the world is all I have to DO.

It won’t take a lot to make my dreams come true.

My money has such power, I can lord it over you.

I act behind-the-scenes in America.

(I act behind-the-scenes)

I act behind-the-scenes in America.

(I act behind-the-scenes)

I act behind-the-scenes in America.

(Trump’s taking this time)

Trump’s taking this time to do the things we always pla-a-a-anned. ooh ooh

Wild Chocolate

The Book of the Week is “Wild Chocolate, Across the Americas in Search of Cacao’s Soul” by Rowan Jacobsen, published in 2024. in this wordy, redundant volume, the author described in great detail, the single-digits 2000’s trend:

In fragmented and complex ways, individuals and families have become the stewards of cacao trees and in environmentally friendly ways, have harvested their beans that are made into high-quality, expensive chocolate sold worldwide. The trend has been comparable to that of microbreweries of the 1990’s. The takeaway was that no one can corner the cacao-bean market anymore.

The author listed just a few different source-countries of cacao trees– Belize, Guatemala, Trinidad, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Ghana, and Ivory Coast. He also described just a few of the risks and dangers associated with the numerous steps of the complicated process of how chocolate products are made. Among them:

lack of access to cacao trees (when the kingpins of the cocaine trade are occupying the remote areas of the Amazon rain forest, or Mexico, where the trees grow);
the flooding of a river around the cacao trees;
lack of fermentation and drying sheds to accommodate the amount of beans harvested;
ruination of an entire batch of beans due to mishaps in connection with food chemistry; and
problems caused by animals’ (electric eels, anacondas, crocodiles, and tucanderas, etc.) sharing the same habitat as the cacao trees.

The author visited the Bolivian Amazon rain forest where the Indigenous tribes do slash-and-burn agriculture, growing rice and herding cattle. By the 1990’s, urbanites were deforesting the region for farming. In 1991, Volker Lehmann, a member of the German Volunteer Service (the equivalent of America’s Peace Corps) sought to re-forest the region via the wild cacao tree. He had to talk to the Chiname tribe.

In June 1991 in Bolivia, the Drug Enforcement Administration of the United States raided the cocaine labs in Santa Ana de Yucuma, but the cocaine trade continued, because growing coca plants (and poppies for the heroin trade) was still more lucrative than the alternative crops of bananas, pineapple or hearts of palm, offered by the German Volunteer Service.

Read the book to learn much more about how much time, effort and expense goes into making chocolate products.

ENDNOTE: The author interchangeably used the terms “jungle” and “rainforest” but they are different.

The Loom of Time

The Book of the Week is “The Loom of Time, Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China” by Robert S. Kaplan, published in 2023. This redundant volume contained a hodgepodge of articles on the author’s observations, information and opinions gleaned from interviews, of his travels all over the Middle East over the course of decades, through wars, regime changes and anarchy.

Kaplan provided only a brief overview; for, all through the Post-WWII Era to date, America’s foreign policy has involved providing a lot of CIA-related (non-Congress-approved!) financial, military and / or humanitarian aid to its allies-of-the-moment, a lot of whose details have been kept top-secret, and are still classified.

Kaplan made generalizations on the evolution, advances and declines of Middle Eastern and Central Asian nations. He wrote that a nation whose military takes over its leadership, is one in decline. The author briefly described Egypt’s past leaders, including Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, and Egypt’s “Arab Spring” between 2011 and 2013.

During Mubarak’s ousting, ordinary Egyptians were traumatized by the street violence. They simply wanted quiet and economic security. Even after the regime change, free speech was banned, and dissidents were tortured and killed. Yes, the chaos had dissipated, but the people were still forced to live under crushing oppression.

The author contradicted himself in saying that the Obama administration chose not to aid ordinary Egyptians in ousting the dictatorial Mubarak, but later, Kaplan implied that the American government was somehow involved in the ousting. No more details were provided. Military man al Sisi became the new top Egyptian leader, while the extremist Muslim Brotherhood also gained significant political power.

The American Republican Party viciously smeared Obama for making Egyptians worse off. They say it was all his fault. Nevertheless, Egyptians varied in their views on whether the political situation had improved or worsened, depending on their own circumstances. A big hindrance to developing democracy in a country is educating the peasants, of which Egypt has a large number, who are easily brainwashed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Geopolitically, one thing leads to another. Egypt’s political instability was related to its inability to fulfill its water needs, as Ethiopia appropriated a portion of the Nile river in its own territory– building infrastructure to meet its own electricity needs.

The author commented naively, that “Quietly, methodically, in a strange way” China is becoming financially intertwined with Egypt. China has a controlling interest in a Suez Canal infrastructure project– a major international trading conduit– and urban construction projects. Perhaps Kaplan is unaware that for decades, China has been contracting with numerous countries to build infrastructure for them. It has significant financial stakes in many large American corporations.

The author goes on to describe how China signed on to pave streets, build new housing and transportation, skyscrapers and parks in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. China has already begun assembling highways and byways in the Soviet “Stans” territories, and is planning to ultimately build a paved trade-route beginning in China that runs through Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Eurasia.

The author visited Sulaymaniyah in Kurdistan in northern Iraq. American-taxpayer dollars kick-started the multi-religious political arrangement that has allowed the Kurds to live relatively peacefully since the Second Gulf War. The younger generation has technology, but the older generation is corruption-entrenched. Their uni-ethnic society (two factions of Kurds) is thus vulnerable to unrest from haters. There are free elections but the politicians go unregulated. (Sounds familiar!) Armed men run the country.

Read the book to learn a bit about the ancient history and recent geopolitics of various lands of Middle East and Central Asia; however, in order to connect the dots, the reader must pore over the entire book from cover to cover. Or already have gleaned context and background through the most efficient way to read history– personal accounts of politicians and leaders with historical backdrop, or “life and times” biographies.

From That Place and Time

The Book of the Week is “From That Place and Time, A Memoir 1938-1947” by Lucy S. Dawidowicz, published in 1989. In this slightly sloppily edited, completely chronogically disorganized volume, the author detailed her: experiences during a time of anti-Semitism and war, and then 20/20 hindsight.

Born in 1915 in New York City, the author was sent to Hebrew school, but was only “culturally Jewish.” This, to American Jews, means celebrating the major annual holidays, but neither going to services nor observing the vast majority of religious laws on a daily basis.

The author’s parents came to the United States from Poland around 1908. They thought the Yiddish language would be the common element that would unify the Jewish community. Around the 1910’s, an American Jew, Chaim Zhitlowsky tried to popularize that idea. The author therefore was fluent in Yiddish.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, there were four different educational Jewish factions (contentious with one another) in New York City that taught Yiddish: Zionist and socialist, socialist and anti-Zionist, Communist-affiliated, and non-political but culturally Jewish (For a description of the different aspects of Zionism, type “Zionism” in the search bar on the upper right side of this blog; the term “Zionism” like “feminism” and “global warming” was hijacked for emotionally-charged propaganda purposes.). The author fell into the last group.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the author perceived that American Jews didn’t have the same fears of getting bullied and victimized by discrimination as their European counterparts did. The Americans weren’t “wandering Jews.” Of course, she was always among her own kind of people, so she wasn’t exposed or subjected to hatred against her group.

In 1935, there existed a group named the Freeland League who were searching for a homeland for the Jews, other than Palestine. One place they looked at, was Kimberley in Australia. It seems the current territorial disputes between Jews and Palestinians are focused on lands they claim their ancestors occupied for centuries, and no substitute territories will do.

Anyway, Dawidowicz’s father instilled in her a hostility toward the religious aspects of Judaism, as well as toward Zionism. “Furthermore, [in the mid-1930’s] in Palestine, the Zionists denigrated Yiddish and demanded that Hebrew alone be the national language of the Palestinian settlement.”

In March 1935, in rearming for world conquest, Hitler tore up the Versailles Treaty. Stalin felt he needed to make nice with the West in order to gain security for Russia. So in August 1935, the Soviet leadership announced a new policy that pivoted away from Marxism. It was the new Stalinism: collectively fighting against the Nazis and Japanese militarism.

In spring 1938, the Polish government hated its own Jews, and was looking for an excuse to refuse to accept Jewish refugees from Germany. Nevertheless, that autumn, the author went to study and do research at the Yiddish Scientific Institute in Poland. In August 1939, Stalin reversed himself and allied with Hitler so the two could take over Poland.

Read the book to learn of the author’s anguish at the historical events of the next decade, and how they affected her generation.

And So To America

The Book of the Week is “And So To America” by Cecil Roberts, published in 1947. Clearly, the author (who was an established British writer born in May 1892) had 20/20 hindsight of WWII at this book’s writing. He threw in the kitchen sink at intervals, of the history of specific people, places and things, of all different centuries.

In October 1939, Roberts began public-speaking tours in the United States to try to alert ordinary Americans to the dangers of taking no action against the Germans, who had already invaded Poland. In 1935, FDR sign the Neutrality Act that took effect in 1937. The Act denied America’s allies any military help in the event they felt they were in need of it. After the horrors of WWI, America had no interest in entering another war, and thought the Atlantic Ocean would offer geographic protection from the violence going on in Europe.

The author claimed the British government initially declined his offer of assistance on the public-relations front, but he did admit that it compensated him for certain services he performed for the British Embassy in America, and the British Ministry of Information.

Roberts also participated in a program that allowed about four thousand children and some of their mothers to move to the U.S. during the time that Britain was getting bombed via warplanes. Generous American families hosted them. Those Britishers’ families had assets in the U.S. that had been frozen by the Treasury. For, Great Britain had yet to pay America back for its WWI debt.

Beginning in September 1939, Republicans in the American federal government voted against three different pieces of legislation (that passed at FDR’s urging anyway) that would prepare the United States for war, through: military spending to rearm, reinstating the draft and repealing an arms embargo (which kind of negated the Neutrality Act).

In 1940, there were two major groups of Republicans, one of which opposed FDR in the presidential election– isolationists and the anti-New Dealers. They viewed his running for a third term, as dictatorial. Besides that, they were also thinking Germany would win the war, so they were preparing to reap the spoils when that happened. They were viciously vengeful against FDR, spouting the meanest, nastiest smears again him.

As is well known, in mid-August 1945, on the world’s various continents, people were homeless, still dying in frightful numbers from disease and starvation, from having participated in the war gone by, occupying the wrong place at the wrong time as an innocent bystander, or from just plain bad luck in not having been born a royal-family member!

Meanwhile, in Newport Rhode Island, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt threw a dinner party for some two hundred guests in lavish surroundings that included fresh pink flowers, two orchestras, and caviar and champagne. The author was there, rubbing shoulders with the elitists, a little disturbed about this cosmic injustice, but not enough to do anything about it.

Roberts also wrote, “In the following years [after WWII] one was very conscious of the India and Palestine questions. It would appear that large sections of the American people were perturbed about the reputed tyranny of Britain in these two places.” Read the book to learn a boatload more history and of the author’s adventures in the lap of luxury in America.

Eighty years later, the overall status of humanity in the world has improved a little, but not much.

For the last 45 years, Republicans in America have:

enjoyed their pet programs (military and security that kick out, keep out, or possibly trample on, the civil rights of, foreigners and poor people) while

been trying to justify eliminating what they consider government handouts (the social safety net that assists older or unlucky people, or those who have made bad life-choices).

Beginning with the George W. Bush era, the Republicans have become hypocrites because they ruined their own reputation for fiscal responsibility– they went on a spending spree that caused the deficit to skyrocket!

Here’s a little song that describes the current political situation in the United States– what the budget-busting Republicans are singing.

SLASH SLASH

sung to the tune of “Splish Splash” with apologies to the Estate of Bobby Darin and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Slash, slash, we’re doing the math,

long about a budget-bill fight. yeah

Snub, snub, just taxing-the Democrats’ club,

favoring everyTHING far-Right.

Well, jack up the deficit. It’s all Biden’s fault.

Open wounds around us, and we rub in the salt.

Well, slash, slash, we went back to the math, well, how were we to know Biden’s brain was all gone?

We’re Biden-bashing, healthcare-slashing,

wheeling and dealing, Dems are stewing and a-suing,

we’re complying with Trump’s lying. Yeah.

Bang, bang, we smear the Liberal gang,

dancing on the Democrats’ graves.

Yeah, no cops, pulling out all the stops.

This bill has the pork we crave.

Well there’s, big MON-ey, for ICE.

Forget the EARTH.

We Reagan wannaBES put America FIRST.

Well- a, we can’t forget about the math. We have to put our fancy PR on. Yay.

We’re polling and steam-rolling, wheeling and dealing,

Dems are stewing and a-suing. Slashing and slashing. Yeah.

Yes, we’re Biden-bashing, we’re polling and steam-rolling.

Yeah, Dems are stewing and a-suing. We’re wheeling and dealing.

We’re polling and steam-rolling. We’re complying with Trump’s lying. Slash slash yeah

mm slashing and slashing, all-time we’re Biden-bashing, whoo-wee, Dems are stewing and a-suing, we’re slashing and slashing…