My weekly reading for June 16, 2024

Some highlights from my weekly reading.

by Matthew Petti, RodeJune 13, 2024.

Extract:

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Research (PCPSR) released its report latest polling data from the West Bank and Gaza Wednesday. It turns out that the Palestinians are not satisfied with all current options – including the Biden administration’s plan for international governance of Gaza.

The last Palestinian elections took place in 2006. Although no party won a majority, Hamas had the largest bloc in parliament, with 44 percent of the vote. The Bush administration encouraged Palestinian security agents to stage a coup against Hamas, leading to a Palestinian civil war. Since then, Hamas has ruled Gaza and Fatah the West Bank, both as one-party states.

If parliamentary elections were held today, most Palestinians would not vote for either option. Hamas would get 32 ​​percent of the vote, Fatah would get 17 percent of the vote, and a full 50 percent would withdraw from the elections or vote for a third party. The survey found that turnout in presidential elections was also terribly low – with one twist.

If former guerrilla leader Marwan Barghouti were allowed to run, he would handily defeat both the Hamas and Fatah candidates. Barghouti has been imprisoned by Israel since 2002 for his role in several attacks on Israelis. denies order. He has since said he accepts the deal Israel’s pre-1967 borders and called for “peaceful popular resistance.”

But:

That said, when PCPSR asked Palestinians what the best path to independence was, 54 percent said “armed struggle,” while 16 percent favored peaceful resistance and 25 percent favored negotiations. It was a decrease compared to December 2023, when 63 percent opted for armed struggle.

by Charles Palm, Defining ideasJune 12, 2024.

So many fragments that it is difficult to choose. Read the whole thing.

by Charles Palm, Defining ideasJune 12, 2024.

Extract:

Eighteen million people, out of a population of a hundred million adults, passed through the Gulag in those fifty years or so, and millions died. It was a pervasive part of Soviet life, and seeing how it was managed would provide insight into the way Soviet communism itself worked. We received the full range of documentation: secret police documents, policy papers and minutes of meetings, laws, decrees, court decisions, regulations on camp management and operations, lists of prisoners, budgets, reports of the huge industrial enterprises run by the Gulag government are managed. , data on hunger strikes and mass uprisings, and documents on camp culture, education and healthcare. We have documents documenting every aspect of the Gulag: three million pages.

by Bradley J. Birzer, Law & FreedomJune 14, 2024.

As far as we know (and historians are still trying to document these things), there has been no more intense genocide in the twentieth century than that committed by the Khmer Rouge. Although reported figures vary, the Khmer Rouge murdered anywhere from 25% to 47% of Cambodia’s population of seven million in the three years it ruled. As the Khmer Rouge openly stated: “All we need to build our country is a million good revolutionaries. Not more than that. And we would rather kill ten friends than leave one enemy alive.”

by Robert Tracinski, ConversationJune 14, 2024.

The joke that immediately started doing the rounds after the surprising American victory in Dallas is that Pakistan lost not to “India-B” (one of the Indian national cricket teams), but to “India H-1B.” India vs Pakistan is the most intense rivalry in cricket, fueled by the geopolitical rivalry between the two countries. It’s a bit like the Yankees versus the Red Sox, but with nuclear weapons. The US cricket team is dominated by Indian immigrants who are here on H-1B visasawarded to skilled workers, especially in the engineering industry.