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In fact, Hong Kong did have a well worked-out public housing policy at the time when the British returned Hong Kong to China in 1997.When Tung Chee Hwa was chosen to be Hong Kong's first Chief Executive after the handover, he and his team announced the “85,000 policy” in Oct 1997 as part of the Hong Kong government’s Long Term Housing Strategy. It stated that no less than 85,000 public and private flats would be built annually starting in 1999.However, it was not meant to be. A year after the announcement, Tung scrapped the plan. In fact, Leung Chun-ying, Hong Kong's 3rd Chief Executive who served between 2012 and 2017 blamed Tung for scrapping the housing plan and not standing firm. Leung was working under Tung and known for being an advocate for the “85,000 policy” during Tung’s tenure.Leung told the media in 2018 that Hong Kong’s present housing crisis could have been averted if the “85,000 policy” had stayed in place.Leung blamed the opposition parties blocking the “85,000 policy” during the first post-handover administration. Leung also said that, contrary to popular belief, the policy did not cause the 1997 housing market crash.“If Tung’s 85,000 policy had the acceptance and cooperation of the public, including those in the legislature, today’s housing problems would not exist,” Leung said. “Because people at the time widely believed that the 85,000 policy was responsible for the fall in prices, the government decided to cancel the goal, and you can see the effect today."“Tung and others wanted to enact the 85,000 policy, but popular opinion – especially the opposition faced in the Legislative Council – made it impossible,” he said. “It was the same over the past few years: we tried to increase the land supply, but we could not get it passed because the opposition parties control whether the budget gets approved.”Collusion between officials and property tycoons in HKIt's no secret that Hong Kong property market is controlled by a minority of rich property tycoons in Hong Kong.For example, Lam Woon-kwong who was the Convenor of the Executive Council between 2012 and 2017, once lamented to the media that the biggest land bank was not owned by the government, but was in the hands of property tycoons.Naturally, a policy like Tung's “85,000 policy” flooding the market with property units would be detrimental to the interests of those property tycoons. It has thus been speculated that the scrapping of the “85,000 policy” was in-part linked to pressures from the tycoons.Eurasia Review, an independent Journal and Think Tank, wrote an article some years ago pointing to collusion between officials and property tycoons in Hong Kong."The collusion outcry definitely fans the popular speculation that the economy of this Special Administration Region is de facto ruled by the four major property tycoons in Hong Kong. By virtue of their riches, they command the attention of senior politicians in public office, to such an extent that policies are usually formulated with their best interests in mind and preference treatment or direct favoritism are granted to them from time to time either above the law or below the table," it said.Publicly, there have been numerous allegations of favoritism, conflicts of interest and suspected bribery with property tycoons by public officials that lend credence to the above speculation.Such speculations were especially heightened when Hong Kong was shaken by the arrest of Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP) Executive Director Thomas Chan by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) on 19 March 2012. Co-chairmen Thomas and Raymond Kwok and five others were later also arrested as part of an extensive corruption probe. Rafael Hui, former chief secretary of Hong Kong, was taken in for questioning. In December 2014, Thomas Kwok and Rafael Hui were convicted of the HK$8,500,000 bribery, and Hui was convicted of four more charges relating to misconduct in public office.In addition to being the Chief Secretary, Hui was also the managing director of Mandatory Providence Fund (MPF), and the chairman of the steering committee on the development of western Kowloon, a mega project valued at USD 1.0 billion involving cultural facilities and real-estate development. Even before the corruption case erupted, Hui was seen as a close friend and business associate of Kwok’s brothers. In 2003, after his resignation from the MPF Office, Hui set up a consultancy firm dedicated to providing political and economic consultancy services. The following year, while serving as a director of the Kowloon Motor Bus Company, a corporation under the SHKP Group, Hui was offered to live in a luxurious apartment in Leighton Hill which is worth about HK$ 150 million and apparently at the expense of the Kwok’s brothers. In 2005, Hui was invited by the former Chief Executive, Donald Tsang, his long-term alliance in the government, to become the Chief Secretary for the Administration. But instead of moving into the official residence at Barker Road, Hui insisted to stay in Kwok’s luxurious Leighton Hill apartment. This insistence of maintaining a close tie with the Kwok’s brothers, along with the suspicion that he was granted an overdraft privileges at banks without collateral so as to maintain his lavish style of living eventually aroused the suspicion of corruption. Hui became the highest ranked civil servant in Hong Kong history to be put behind bar for bribery.The collusion of Hui with the Kwok’s brother undoubtedly has helped SHKP to dominate the Hong Kong property market. During the period Hui was in various senior public offices, it was believed that he had revealed substantial confidential information to his related parties with regard to government policies, internal planning on land sales and zoning, and accorded these parties preferential treatments in exchange of the favors and benefits he received from them.Rafael HuiThen there was a controversy involving another senior civil servant, Permanent Secretary for Housing, Planning and Lands, Leung Chin-man, and the New World Development Group (NWD). In the year prior to 2004, Leung acted on behalf of the government to sell a never-occupied high-rise complex called the Hung Hom Peninsula, which was built under the Private Sector Participation Scheme project, for a below-market land premium of HK$864 million to NWD. The latter subsequently sold off half of the share to SHKP. In late 2004, the consortium announced the demolition of these buildings to make way for luxury apartments. Their plan was eventually withdrawn due to the huge public outcry against this needless destruction of “perfectly good buildings” to satisfy “corporate greed”.Leung was also involved in another case of suspected preferential treatment granted to property developer Henderson Land Development (HLD), which had won a tender for a site in Sai Wan Ho for Grand Promenade with a land premium of HK$2.43 billion in January 2001. Six months later, the developer successfully applied for and was granted permission by Leung to exclude the public transport terminus from the gross floor area in its building plan. This exclusion was akin to granting HLD an additional 10,700 square meters to the project, doubling the number of apartments from 1,008 to 2,020, and resulted in lost revenue to the government amounting to HK$125 million. A 2005 Audit Report criticized Leung for having exercised his discretionary power before conferring with other government departments, thus handing to the developer additional revenue of HK$3.2 billion in exchange for a land premium of $6 million. Leung tabled a judicial review to justify his discretionary power and eventually forced the Government in May 2006 to drop the legal proceedings. The government drew severe criticism for not pressing the case in court, despite of wide suspicion that conflict of interest was involved in Leung’s dealings with NWD and HLD.The public outcry was soon proven well founded. In July 2008 after his retirement, Leung was offered a post as deputy managing director of New World China Land, a subsidiary of NWD. It turned out that after one year ‘sterilization period’ after retirement, Leung obtained approval from the Civil Service Bureau to take up employment with New World China Land. This job offer immediately provoked public uproar amidst widespread suspicion that it was a quid pro quo for the favors he apparently granted to NWD in 2004 for the Hung Hom project.Controversies surrounded not only the suspicions of Leung’s own conflict of interest, but also of the insensitivity of the committee which recommended the approval for him to take up his new job with a HK$3.12 million pay packet in less than two years after his official retirement. Under public pressure, NWD announced on 16 August, 2008 that Leung had resigned from his post. The Secretary for the Civil Service apologized for the poor handling of the case, which seriously undermined the authority and credibility of the Civil Service Bureau.There were more precedents in favoritism towards property tycoons behind the scenes than meets the eye. One of the most conspicuous one is the Cyberport Project. This project has been conjured up to build a physical hub for information technology on 26 hectares of prime land in Hong Kong Island. The development was announced by Donald Tsang, then Financial Secretary, in his budget speech on 3 March, 1999. The project was awarded to the Pacific Century Group (PCG), with no tender called. PCG is a private company controlled by Richard Li, younger son of Li Ka Shing, who is a long-time friend of Hong Kong’s first Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa. The Cyberport project was described in the budget on March 3, 1999 as being a “HK$13bn development, mostly from private investment”. A statement from the Information Technology and Broadcasting Bureau (ITBB) the same day said “the Government will provide the site as its equity contribution while PCG will make a capital contribution of about HK$7 billion to the whole development”. From this one could infer that the government values the land merely at HK$6 billion, a valuation believed to be much lower than its fair market price.Upon public disclosure, it turned out that over 75% of the developed area is residential, whereas the office space allocated for the Information Technology firms represents only 17% of the total. And the purported “shared facilities” such as “demonstration facilities”, a “media laboratory”, and “exhibition and trade show facilities” make up part of a small 18,000 sq. m. block which includes houses and apartments, so even if half of this block is shared facilities, it would only account for 1.7% of the development, amounting to a shared Laundromat in a housing estate! Hence, it becomes obvious that the so called Cyberport project is in fact a residential development project in disguise, and it was granted exclusively to the company of property tycoon Li Ka Shing’s son without any formal tender process.Finally, one mustn't forget about Donald Tsang, the 2nd Chief Executive of Hong Kong from 2005 to 2012. In the last months of his term, Tsang was embroiled by various corruption allegations. He was discovered to have received favours and hospitality from the tycoons on various occasions, including private jet and yacht trips and was labelled as "Greedy Tsang". He was subsequently charged by the Independent Commission Against Corruption and was found guilty of one count of misconduct in public office in February 2017 and was sentenced to a 20-month imprisonment, becoming the highest officeholder in Hong Kong history to be convicted and imprisoned. The Court of Final Appeal unanimously quashed his conviction and sentence in June 2019, ruling that he had already suffered a “just punishment” by being jailed 12 months.HK protests stem from stratospheric housing pricesIn Aug 2019, renowned economist Andy Xie opined that at the root of the civil unrest in Hong Kong actually stems in part from stratospheric housing prices that have locked many residents out of the market.Xie pointed out that HK property tycoons ‘are the problem’ underlying the unrest. Property prices in Hong Kong have appreciated over 300% since 2003 but wages have largely stagnated in the same period, so “it’s very difficult to see how young people can feel hope. They know they’ll never be able to afford a place, so they cannot start a family. How can they get ahead in life? Desperation, and really a deep sense of unhappiness, is driving this unrest,” said Xie.Xie attributed the sky-high property price to the housing market being lead by local business leaders. “The Hong Kong government is not really in charge (even though) most people think that they need to listen to Beijing, but perhaps more importantly, they are really influenced by the big property tycoons,” said Xie.Although the Hong Kong authorities have changed housing policies several times, “in the end, they favor tycoons, giving the land to the tycoons,” the economist asserted. But private developers “hold the land, not building much and they just try to squeeze the market and push the prices as much as possible,” he said.“For ordinary people, you make an income about 5% of a financial guy and they think you should get 5% of an apartment, so they create something like a ‘nano flat,’” he said, referring to tiny apartments in Hong Kong that can be the size of a parking space. “That is really crazy.”Nano flat“They think that people will just take it lying down forever, (but) eventually, it blows up,” said Xie, who was a former chief Asia-Pacific economist at Morgan Stanley. “The key is that the political structure here is neither the Singapore situation where the government is on top, nor like Taiwan (where) it’s a democracy and people can vote,” said Xie, who also writes for South China Morning Post from time to time. Hong Kong is “in between — just a bunch of business people calling the shots,” he added. He said that Beijing needs to distance itself from the tycoons in Hong Kong.“Every time, there’s a disturbance in Hong Kong, Beijing goes to these business guys for advice; you know something’s very wrong,” said Xie. “These guys are causing the trouble in Hong Kong, why are you going to them for advice every time?”“They are the problem; they need to become regular business people, not having political power (and) running the place,” said Xie.Echoing what Xie said, Simon Lee from the Chinese University of Hong Kong Business School also opined that while the protests were squarely directed at the controversial Extradition Bill in the beginning, it became clearer over time that there was deep dissatisfaction over the administrative failures of the Hong Kong government in meeting its people’s needs, especially on housing, which of course, is the bread and butter business of the property tycoons in Hong Kong.In the 5000 year history of China, every time corruption permeates and, officials and business people start to collude to fleece and oppress the peasants to such an extent that they have to sell their wife and daughters to survive, revolution will surely follow resulting in chaos and deaths for everyone. Wasn't that how the Communist Party of China was founded? To build a new China and take down the landlords aligning themselves with the Nationalist warlords, who were all colluding to oppress and fleece the peasants in order to enrich themselves further?Ref:https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/06/13/ex-hong-kong-leader-cy-leung-defends-controversial-1990s-housing-policy-says-crisis-averted/Property market in 'dangerous situation', warns Lam Woon-kwongHong Kong: Revelations In SHK Bribery Case; Collusion Between Politicians And Property Tycoons – OpEdSun Hung Kai Properties - WikipediaDonald Tsang - WikipediaEconomist: Hong Kong's tycoons 'are the problem' underlying recent unrestUpdate (17 Sep 2019):On 12 Sep 2019, the People's Daily published an editorial piece (解决住房问题，香港不能再等了!) urging the Hong Kong authorities to act on the housing problems in Hong Kong. The title of the article read, "Fix the housing problem, Hong Kong can no longer wait!"The People's Daily (人民日報) is the largest newspaper group in China and is an official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Hence, it provides direct information on the policies and view points of the Communist Party of China.The editorial noted that the housing problem in Hong Kong is becoming more serious. The average waiting time for public housing applications has increased to 5.4 years, with 100,000 people living in “coffin rooms” and subdivided flats."This situation is incompatible with the internationally renowned metropolis and is in stark contrast to the mansions on the Taiping Mountain (where the rich lives)," it said.Having a house, clothing, and food is the most basic human right and the most basic dignity one should have, it added."There is no reason for Hong Kong to wear a glamorous coat such as 'the most competitive economy in the world' when it embarrassingly fails in housing."The editorial also reiterated that the crux of Hong Kong's housing problem lies in land supply. It noted that it isn't the case that Hong Kong has no land but the Hong Kong government has too little.It further noted that Hong Kong property developers have been hoarding most of the land and not developing them. It opined that the Hong Kong government could consider taking the land back from the developers after compensating them with the amount "equivalent to the actual value of the property at the time", under Article 105 for the Basic Law.The editorial then turned to the developers, saying, "In public interest, in order to solve the livelihood of the people, it's time for the real estate developers to release the greatest goodwill, instead of being selfish, hoarding land and earning the last penny.""We can understand that some Hong Kong people are worried that the increase in supply of land may result in a rapid depreciation of assets in the short term. It is also understandable that real estate developers are concerned about not making money," it said."But this is precisely the time to re-examine immediate interests against long-term interests, and re-balance personal interests against the greater societal interests.""Once the Hong Kong society is deadlocked and loses competitiveness, the value of everyone's property will depreciate; as long as the Oriental Pearl continues to remain competitive, then the beneficiaries must be Hong Kong enterprises and its people."The editorial also opined that a large part why the Extradition Bill was able to rope in many of the young people, who originally didn't care about politics, to protest was because they feel despair of the future of Hong Kong, and housing is an important reason.It went on to criticise the previous and current Hong Kong Chief Executives, Tung Chee Hwa, Leung Chun-ying and Carrie Lam, for failing to carry out their promises to fix Hong Kong's public housing problems. Many of their plans ended sloppily, were heavily discounted or stalled altogether, noted the editorial.It further criticised the opposition parties in the Legislative Council opposing for the sake of opposing, crippling some of the Hong Kong government's housing plans. It also criticised the property developers, "There are property developers for the sake of profits, coerce the Hong Kong government and shackle public will, causing the entire Hong Kong society to fall into a mess where housing prices are beyond public reach but at the same time cannot afford to fall, where housing are insufficient but not built.""And some members of public neither understand nor trust the SAR government's ability to improve Hong Kongers' livelihood," it added."Hong Kong can't wait any further," the editorial ended with a warning.More Updates:About 2 weeks after the publication of an editorial piece from the People's Daily urging the Hong Kong authorities to act on the housing problems and singling out Hong Kong developers for not doing enough to alleviate housing problems, Reuters reported (25 Sep 2019) that New World Development had declared that it would donate 3 million square feet of its farmland reserves for social housing. This constitutes about one fifth of its land bank with an attributable total site area of around 16.9 million square feet.The Chengs of New World Development is one of the big 4 property oligarchs controlling most of the residential land bank in Hong Kong. The other 3 are:Kwoks of Sun Hung Kai Properties which owns an estimated 30 million sq ftLee Shau Kee's ('Uncle Fouth') family of Henderson Land Development which owns about 45 million sq ftLi Ka-shing's ('Superman Li') family of CK Asset which owns about 9 million sq ft.Hong Kong political parties have called on the government to make more use of an ordinance to resume agricultural land from property developers to build public housing, instead of letting them sitting on it. To maintain the high property prices in Hong Kong, the big 4 have been controlling the housing constructions and limiting supply.The People's Daily criticised the Hong Kong developers for hoarding land and said it was time for them “to release the greatest goodwill, instead of just playing their own calculations, smashing the land, earning the last copper plate”.Facing increasing pressure from Beijing, Adrian Cheng, executive vice chairman of New World Development, has assured in a press conference that his company would adopt an open attitude if the HK government needed to look for land for public housing.

To fully understand this conflict, people need to read books not just Quora posts.The animosity between Jews and Arab Muslims started way back with the inception of Islam and the hateful book that they worship called the Koran with its interpretations in the Hadith and Sira.**The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism by Andrew G. Bostom**Description from Amazon books:"This comprehensive, meticulously documented collection of scholarly articles presents indisputable evidence that a readily discernible, uniquely Islamic antisemitism-a specific Muslim hatred of Jews-has been expressed continuously since the advent of Islam. Debunking the conventional wisdom, which continues to assert that Muslim animosity toward Jews is entirely a 20th-century phenomenon fueled mainly by the protracted Arab-Israeli conflict, leading scholars provide example after example of antisemitic motifs in Muslim documents reaching back to the beginnings of Islam. The contributors show that the Koran itself is a significant source of hostility toward Jews, as well as other foundational Muslim texts including the hadith (the words and deeds of Muhammad as recorded by pious Muslim transmitters) and the sira (the earliest Muslim biographies of Muhammad). Many other examples are adduced in the writings of influential Muslim jurists, theologians, and scholars, from the Middle Ages through the contemporary era. These primary sources, and seminal secondary analyses translated here for the first time into English - such as Hartwig Hirschfeld's mid-1880s essays on Muhammad's subjugation of the Jews of Medina and George Vajda's elegant, comprehensive 1937 study of the hadith - detail the sacralized rationale for Islam's anti-Jewish bigotry. Numerous complementary historical accounts illustrate the resulting plight of Jewish communities in the Muslim world across space and time, culminating in the genocidal threat posed to the Jews of Israel today."The Holy Land was conquered several times over the last 2720 years by various empires who robbed, slaughtered and exiled most of the Israeli population from the Holy Land including, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Arabs again, Ottomans and Brits.After WWI, the League of Nations issued Mandates, made agreements and passed Resolutions including a Mandate for then Palestine which clearly stipulates the Brits will enable the establishment of a Homeland for the Jewish people on their historical ancestral Homeland.After WWII the League of Nations was dismantled and a new organization set up, the UN with a new Charter.The main clause in that new Charter is Article 80.As per Article 80 of the UN Charter, no UN resolution can override Israel’s existing legal rights and title of sovereignty over any region of the Land of Israel based on the above earlier acts of International Law: The Jan Smuts Resolution of January 30, 1919, Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, including the Treaty of Versailles of June 28, 1919, the San Remo Resolution of April 25, 1920, the Mandate for Palestine as confirmed on July 24, 1922 and the Franco-British Convention of December 23, 1920, all of which recognized the historical connection of the Jewish People with the Land of Israel.A Palestinian-Arab state on land lawfully designated for the Jewish state violates U.S. treaty obligations (the 1924 Anglo-American Convention/Treaty and UN Charter) guaranteeing the Jewish people’s rights to the entire mandatory area, including Judea/Samaria.It also contradicts the Oslo Accords, which, as confirmed by then-Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin’s last speech to the Knesset, contemplated a Palestinian entity that is less than a state.Armistice Agreement of 1949http://www.knesset.gov.il/process/docs/armistice_jordan_eng.htm (http://www.knesset.gov.il/process/docs/armistice_jordan_eng.htm)Article 69. The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto.http://www.mythsandfacts.org/Conflict/mandate_for_palestine/MandateN2%20-%2010-29-07-English.pdf (http://www.mythsandfacts.org/Conflict/mandate_for_palestine/MandateN2%20-%2010-29-07-English.pdf)Here is a list of books:**Palestine Betrayed by Prof' Efraim Karsh****The Rape of Palestine by William Ziff****Battleground by Samuel Katz****Full text of "Meinertzhagen Middle East Diary 1917-1958 Excerpts"** (Full text of "Meinertzhagen Middle East Diary 1917-1958 Excerpts")Colonel Meinertzhagen was born in 1878, educatedin Harrow and joined the Army in 1899. He servedwith the Royal Fusiliers in India until 1902, when he transferred to the King's African Rifles.During the 1914-1918 war he served on the Staff inEast Africa, Palestine and France. After the warhe was a member of the Paris Peace Delegation. He served as Chief Political Officer in Palestine andSyria from 1919-1920 and as Military Adviser to the Middle East Department of the Colonial Office from 1921-1924.Throughout this period. he playedan important part in the affairs of the Middle East,and notably Palestine, and his interest in andconnection with the region have continued ever since.During the Second.World War he was on the staffof the \War Office 1939-1940 and served in theHome Guard from 1940-1945.Here is only one of his notes:14.Vl.l919 Paris pa.22Yesterday I met an Italian called Bianehini who professed to be a keen Zionist and had just returned from a pro-longed visit to Palestine, He poured out many complaints against the British Administration in Palestine, asserting that they are encouraging the Arabs to oppose Zionism, that the Arabs are being granted privileges denied to the Jews, that the police are corrupt and that the Jewsregard the Administration as half-hearted regardingthe National Home.I also met Colonel Stirling of General Clayton’s staffwho confirmed Bianehini’ s statement, adding that Ronald Storrs is playing a double game, pretending to favour the Jews whilst intriguing against them.It is clear that the political state of Palestine isunhappy and that is due to lack of a clear policy byH.M.G. and their failure to make it abundantly clearthat the National Home is the declared policy ofAlso the Palestine Administration must bepurged of those elements hostile to Zionism.I have written a memorandum to the D.M.I. embodying these remarks,Weizman tells me that when he met Clemenceau with a view to enlisting his sympathy with the National Home, that he found him unsympathetic and remarked "We Christians can never forgive the Jews for crucifying Christ", to which Weizmann remarked, "Monsieur Clemenceau, you know perfectly well that ifJesus of Nazareth were to apply for a visa to enter France, it would be refused on the grounds that he was a political agitator".Even though the Jews of then Palestine joined the Brits in their battle in Gallipoli, then during WWI in the liberation of Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, then during WWII, the Jewish Brigade fought with England against Nazi Germany, while the Arabs of then Palestine joined the Nazis against the Allied Forces, the Brits betrayed the Jews big time. See the links below:Jewish Legion - Wikipedia (Jewish Legion - Wikipedia)Jewish Brigade - Wikipedia (Jewish Brigade - Wikipedia)The Arab Chapter of the Holocaust (The Arab Chapter of the Holocaust)The Palestinian Mufti’s War Against the Jews | Israel Behind the News (The Palestinian Mufti’s War Against the Jews | Israel Behind the News)The White Paper: 80 Years Later (The White Paper: 80 Years Later)MI6 Attacked Jewish Refugee Ships After WWII (MI6 Attacked Jewish Refugee Ships After WWII)During WWII the Brits blocked all entrance of Jewish Refugees escaping from Nazi Europe to then Palestine.Those who succeeded to reach then Palestine were rounded up by the Brits and returned to Europe ending up in the death camps.How many Jews went up in smoke due to the crimes against humanity by the Brits?**The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain**On the land of PalestineOf all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective--distance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land.Small shreds and patches of it must be very beautiful in the full flush of spring, however, and all the more beautiful by contrast with the far-reaching desolation that surrounds them on every side. I would like much to see the fringes of the Jordan in spring-time, and Shechem, Esdraelon, Ajalon and the borders of Galilee--but even then these spots would seem mere toy gardens set at wide intervals in the waste of a limitless desolation.Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists--over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead-- about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye. .... The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition--it is dream-land.**The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939 by**Kenneth W. Stein**Product description in Amazon books:"The control of land remains the crucial issue in the Arab-Israel conflict. Kenneth Stein investigates in detail and without polemics how and why Jews acquired land from Arabs in Palestine during the British Mandate, and he reaches conclusions that are challenging and suprising.Stein contends that Zionists were able to purchase the core of a national territory in Palestine during this period for three reasons: they had the single-mindedness of purpose, as well as the capital, to buy the land; the Arabs, economically impoverished, politically fragmented, and socially atomized, were willing to sell the land; and the British were largely ineffective in regulating land sales and protecting Arab tenants.Neither Arab opposition to land sales nor British attempts to regulate them actually limited land acquisition. There were always more Arab offers to sell land than there were Zionist funds. In fact, many sales were made by Arab politicians who publicly opposed Zionism and even led agitation against land acquisition by Jews. Zionists furthered their own ambitions by skillfully using their understanding of the bureaucracy to write laws and to influence key administrative appointments. Further, they knew how to take advantage of social and economic cleavages within Arab society.The overwhelming contribution of Arab land sales to the creation of ageographic nucleus for a Jewish national home was not only astonishing in the amount of land transferred by Arabs (which continued to rise after 1930), but was also marked by the preeminent role of Palestinian Arabs who guided the nationalist cause in the I910s and early 1930s. It is not to be argued here whether the Arab Executive did or did not effectively represent or reflect the interests of the entire Palestinian Arab population. In fact, the Arab Executive accepted the responsibility of representing Palestinian Arab interests to the Palestine administration and to HMG in London. Of the eighty-nine members elected to the Arab Executive between 1920 and June 1928, at least one-quarter can be identified, personally or through immediate family, as having directly participated in land sales to Jews. Of the forty-eight members of the Arab Executive in attendance at the Seventh Arab Congress in June 1928, at least fourteen had by that date been involved in land sales." Members of the various Palestine Arab delegations to London appear to have been deeply involved in the land-sale process. For many of these individuals who sold land, their participation at an early juncture did not preclude the development of overwhelming hostility to land sales at a later date. A detailed, but neither exhaustive nor complete list of Palestinian Arabs involved in land sales to Jews appears in Appendix 3.Based primarily on archival research,The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939 offers an unusually balanced analysis of the social and political history of land sales in Palestine during this critical period. It provides exceptional and essential insight into one of the most troubling conflicts in today's world.ReviewThe first comprehensive, amply documented analysis of the land question in Palestine between the two world wars.-- New York Times**The Claim of Dissposession by Arie L. Avinery**Product description in Amazon books:"This study sheds new light on the historic background of the contemporary Palestinian problem. Avneri traces the spread of Jewish settlements over the seventy-year period before the establishment of the State of Israel, in order to see how it affected the existing Arab community's economy and social and cultural institutions. He demonstrates that there is no historical evidence for the eviction of the Palestinians from Israel previous to the founding of the state. Most of those who left afterwards did so on their own volition.Answer to Did the Arab Palestinians sell their lands to the Zionist movement during the Mandate for Palestine? by Jim Braiden Jim Braiden's answer to Did the Arab Palestinians sell their lands to the Zionist movement during the Mandate for Palestine? (Jim Braiden's answer to Did the Arab Palestinians sell their lands to the Zionist movement during the Mandate for Palestine?)**Chapters from the Annals of the Yishuv 1878-1952 by Moshe Smilansky**Contains comprehensive data of Arab land sales to Jews.The Jewish Agency made sure that no deed of sale be executed without the authorization of the British Administration.**From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters**Product description in Amazon books:"This monumental and fascinating book, the product of seven years of original research, will forever change the terms of the debate about the conflicting claims of the Arabs and the Jews in the Middle East.The weight of the comprehensive evidence found and brilliantly analyzed by historian and journalist Joan Peters answers many crucial questions, among them: Why are the Arab refugees from Israel seen in a different light from all the other, far more numerous peoples who were displaced after World War II? Why, indeed, are they seen differently from the Jewish refugees who were forced, in 1948 and after, to leave the Arab countries to find a haven in Israel? Who, in fact, are the Arabs who were living within the borders of present-day Israel, and where did they come from?Joan Peters's highly readable and moving development of the answers to these and related questions will appear startling, even to those on both sides of the argument who have considered themselves to be in command of the facts. On the basis of a definitive weight of hitherto unexamined population and other historical data, much of it buried in untouched archives, Peters demonstrates that Jews did not displace Arabs in Palestine-just the reverse: Arabs displaced Jews; that a hidden but major Arab migration and immigration took place into areas settled by Jews in pre-Israel Palestine; that a substantial number of the Arab refugees called Palestinians in reality had foreign roots; that for every Arab refugee who left Israel in 1948, there was a Jewish refugee who fled or was expelled from his Arab birthplace at the same time-today's much discussed Sephardic majority in Israel is in fact composed mainly of these Arab-born Jewish refugees or their offspring; that Britain, the Mandatory power, winked at and even encouraged Arab immigration into Palestine between the two World Wars; that by disguising the Arab immigrants as "indigenous native Palestinian Arabs," the British justified their restrictions on Jewish immigration and settlement, dooming masses of European Jews to destruction in the Nazi camps.Joan Peters also unfolds a historical record to shatter the widely held belief that Arabs and Jews harmoniously coexisted for centuries in the Arab world-the fact is that the Jews, along with other non-Muslims, were second-class citizens, oppressed in the Muslim world for more than a millennium. And this continuing prejudicial tradition of hostility underlies, as well, every Arab action toward the state of Israel.In addition to her pioneering archival researches, Joan Peters has frequently traveled in the Middle East, conducting numerous interviews and gathering the personal observations of the first-rate reporter she is. The result is a book that has already had a major impact on policy discussions of one of the most vital and intractable of the world's problems, shrouded until now in a fog of misinformation and ignorance.Distributed exclusively by Jonathan David Publishers.Review"...will change the mind of our generation. If understood, it could also affect the history of the future." -- New Republic"A remarkable document in itself. . . . The refugees are not the problem but the excuse." --Washington Post Book World"Contains much valuable information...deserving the attention of anyone seriously concerned with the Palestinian problem." -- S.D. Goitein, The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton"This book is a historical event in itself..." -- Barbara Tuchman**The Question of Palestine 1914-1918 by Prof' Isaiah Friedman**Product description in Amazon books:"This brilliant and groundbreaking study of international relations in the Middle East during World War I traces the complex course of events that led to the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Isaiah Friedman offers an original and authoritatively documented reassessment of many crucial and controversial issues relating to the question of Palestine, issues that have bedevilled Middle Eastern politics until the present day. The book won the Kaplan Prize in Israeli Studies of The National Jewish Book Council when it initially appeared.The author's primary concern is with the motivations of British policy toward the Zionist movement In his new introduction, Friedman traces in detail the evolving attitudes of prominent English statesmen and public men toward the idea of Jewish settlement in Palestine. He challenges the view current among many British historians that the Balfour Declaration was the result of a miscalculation, a product of sentiment rather than of considered interests of state. He shows that one of the most important motives in British support of the Zionists was to counter the posssibilty of a Turkish-German protectorate of a Jewish Palestine emerging in the aftermath of the war. He also sheds new light on the Sykes-Picot Agreement and examines the intricate question of whether or not Palestine was a "twice promised land," an issue that still has political bearing today.Review“A superlative model of scholarly restraint and objectivity that offers important reassessments of the origins of the Palestine Question. . . . This is an absolute must for all advanced libraries.”**In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon Correspondence and it's Interpretation, 1919-1939****By Prof' Elie Kedourie.**Product description in Amazon books:"The McMahon-Husayn correspondence has been at the heart of Anglo-Arab relations since World War I. It aroused great controversy, particularly over Palestine. Here, it is examined in historical context to determine why it was so obscure and what lay in the minds of those who drafted it."The McMahon-Husayn correspondence greatly affected Anglo-Arab relations after the First World War. Written in obscure and ambiguous terms, it aroused great controversy, particularly over the issue of Palestine. Originally published in 1976, this study brought together for the first time all the available evidence from British, French and Arabic sources and elucidated the meaning of the correspondence."**The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel Under International Law by Howard Grief.**M. D Roberts·November 15, 2010Superb. Lays bare so much propaganda & revisionist history.This excellent detailed study by Professor Howard Grief addressing both Israel's legal foundation and borders is an absolute must read. The culmination of 25 years of study addresses a plethora of issues including the San Remo peace conference & a detailed appraisal of the Palestine Mandate, including its original intent, interpretation and application.The study pulls no punches in showing that the Balfour Declaration, Mandate and League of Nations were intent upon the rebirth of not just a Jewish national home but a Jewish state based upon a historical formula founded upon the 1st/2nd Temple period territories, including lands up to the Litani Valley in present day Lebanon. The present borders of Israel are shown to be clearly not those originally designated for the Jewish people by the aforementioned international agreements.Detailed reference reveals how it was originally agreed between Britain & France that the borders of a Jewish Palestine would be based on the historical or Biblical formula, "from Dan to Beersheba", a phrase appearing several times in the Bible.This shown to have been interpreted up until 1920 by Prime Minister Lloyd George & other British officials to mean that Palestine would include all the lands or regions historically associated with the Jewish People. That is all territory which at one time or other was conquered, settled & governed by the Israelites in the 1st /2nd Temple periods.The historical formula for determining these boundaries was accepted at the San Remo Peace Conference & referred to to in the Mandate Charter, which referred to the historical connection of the Jewish People with Palestine. The British themselves relying on George Adam Smith's "Atlas of the Historical Geography of the Holy Land", published in 1915, in particular on Plate No. 34 that depicted the territory under David and Solomon.The book makes sobering reading as the British are shown to have not abided by their obligations under the Mandate, instead giving precedence to their own political self interests, regional expedience & their relationship with the Arab/Islamic world. The influence of French interests in the region also playing a considerable part as Western entities reneged upon their responsibilities & obligations pertaining to a Jewish home/state in what was Palestine.The reader is shown how international agreements then made & still make it quite clear today, that Israel had/has a perfect legal right to settle land in the disputed territories in 1967, since this was the right assigned to the Jewish people under International Law. Law which continues to be in force despite the political nuances of today which are expedient to the larger pro-Arab international community.Self serving political machinations & expedience are again shown when, under Article 5 of the Mandate Britain - which was not allowed to partition the land - Britain then did so by severing 77% to create the Arab state of Transjordan which, from the moment of its creation, was closed to all Jewish migration and settlement - a clear betrayal of the British promise the tones of which resound even now.Under Article 6 of the Mandate Britain,was supposed to encourage Jewish immigration % settlement all over the now disputed territory - a Jewish right which exists to this day under International Law, despite the Mandate treaty's enactment in 1948.Yet Britain is shown to have reneged upon this responsibility too. British foreign policy of the time, extending to the present day, shown to be that of appeasing the Arab/Islamic world as it appears to continually sacrifice Israel upon the altar of political expedience.In November 1938 the British 'Cabinet Committee For Palestine' held a meeting which effectively resulted in the reneging upon of the Balfour Declaration & the League of Nations Mandate. Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, told the Committee that "the Government would have to choose between it's commitments to the world of Jewry & it's commitments to the world of Islam..." It was subsequently decided that Britain could not afford to antagonise the Muslim world. This resulted in the British White Paper of 1939 which served to appease the Arab/Islamic world & severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine. This was the British policy as the Holocaust descended upon the Jews of Europe.It is virtually impossible to do justice to the vast amount of evidence available in this 700+ page study. I can but highly recommend this work to anyone interesting in the Jewish state, the Arab-Israeli conflict & the manner in which the latter is portrayed/perceived in our day.With such a vast array of facts at your fingertips the individual is left to ponder a number of issues. Not least being how the international community has seemingly side-stepped history & embraced the creation of a Palestinian state in territories promised to the Jewish people & to which they have a heritage spanning many thousands of years. The prerequisite of such a state's creation being the removal/ethnic cleansing of the entire Jewish presence from these areas.With due reference to the contents of this study, the conviction that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal is now so commonly accepted, it hardly seems as though the matter is even open for discussion. Such a case is blown completely out of the water by reference to the factual history. Though routinely referred to nowadays as "Palestinian" land, at no point in history has Jerusalem or the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) been under Palestinian sovereignty in any sense of the term.This compelling account (the book) shows the reader how the public is clearly being completely and utterly deceived by the manner in which the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is being presented to them (in the media), in the face of skillfully orchestrated revisionist history (meaning the “new historians") and a tidal wave of anti-Israel propaganda.This is a book that desperately needs to be read & re-read. International leaders, including those within Israel itself, need to avail themselves of the information provided here.Red Horizons by Ion Michai PacepaA former chief of Romania's foreign intelligence service reveals the extraordinary corruption of the Nicolae Ceausescu government of Romania, its brutal machinery of oppression, and its Machiavellian relationship with the West. An in side story of how Communist Party leaders really live.**The Arab States****Their Contemporary History and Politics by Yaacov Shimoni****Philistine-To-Palestine: Exposing the World's Biggest Deception by Joseph D. Shellim**DescriptionA global chaos and mayhem has extended across the nations. All was blamed on the Middle East Conflict. Yet now a different manifestation has emerged, affirming this was never a local issue about Palestine or of land occupation: Israel holds less than 0.5% of land in Arabia. There was never any land issue across the nations, yet the mayhem extended globally. Thereby, was this conflict wrongly accounted - or was it designed to erupt as it has – and for what purposes?Exposing the long suppressed and omitted issues will cause intense debating; it may even change your views. The issues of Palestine and its global impacts are now exposed as never before – historically, theologically and politically, of both ancient and modern times. The big questions:Who Are “Palestinians”? Why was this name transferred from Jews to Arabs after 2,000 years in 1964?Why were the 3000 year names of Hebrew towns changed to West Bank in 1950? Was King David of Bethlehem, or Jesus of Nazareth, as Palestinians? What was the message of the Dead Sea Scrolls that was hidden from the world?Chamberlain, Hitler and Hajj Amin:Why did Britain appoint Hajj Amin as Grand Mayor of Jerusalem in contradiction of the Balfour Mandate? Was Britain’s division of Palestine and her White Paper Policy legal or crimes against humanity?Who are Arabs? A historical enquiry traces the origins of the Arab group and their first emerging. The issue becomes controversial when the people called as Arabs are connected with Canaan, Abraham, Ishmael, Israel, Judea and Jesus Christ.Today’s Global Refugee Crisis:Why are Millions of Christians and Arabs fleeing their ancient homelands? Why were no ruling conditions placed on the new Arab states – and how does it impact all nations today?Is today’s chaos and mayhem circumstantial or designed?Whatever your views of the modern world’s most controversial issue, this book will arm you with long suppressed and de-classified archives, exposing a host of deceptions created to cover great errors of the 20th century. These have backfired and plunged humanity into chaos and mayhem. Causes and effects apply. “Philistine-To-Palestine” is presented with quotes and interviews from the widest range of credible sources. From Scholars, Theologians, Clerics, Lawyers, Presidents, Kings, Ottoman Sultans, Arabian Emirs, Ambassadors, Authors, Talk Show Hosts, Human Rights Advocates and Bloggers.A 3,000 year population survey of Palestine and 40 historical images expose the great deceptions of the modern world that have come to haunt all nations. Perhaps we are driving on the wrong lane of this highway?Knowledge is power. Arm yourself.**How can this conflict be solved?**It will, when the wells of petro-dollars dry up and the swamps of terrorism decease to exist.Maybe not in our generation but there is light at the end of the tunnel.Those who think that the UN, Useless defunctional corrupt organisation can or wants to do anything, read this:UN folly & CorruptionNorwegian coverage of the UNRWA summer camp for weapons instruction | Israel Behind the News (Norwegian coverage of the UNRWA summer camp for weapons instruction | Israel Behind the News)Hamas 'Partners' with UN | Clarion Project (Hamas 'Partners' with UN | Clarion Project)SMITH & WESTROP: New Evidence Shows U.N. Engulfed In Bin Laden-Linked Charity Scandal (SMITH & WESTROP: New Evidence Shows U.N. Engulfed In Bin Laden-Linked Charity Scandal)The hypocrisy of the UN by AIPAC"The hypocrisy of the BDS campaign against Israel can be especially seen at the United Nations, where agencies like the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) have long records of hostility toward Israel.Since its inception in 2006, the UNHRC has passed 83 resolutions condemning Israel, more than all other nations combined. It has now compiled a blacklist of 22 American companies doing business in Israel and is moving toward a boycott of those firms.Other U.N. bodies have absurdly characterized Israel as the world’s leading abuser of women’s rights, labor rights, even mental health.This is all part of the double standards and hypocrisy the Jewish state routinely faces. "UN Singles Out Israel as World's Only Violator of Women's Rights; Iran, Saudi Arabia & Yemen Among the Voters - UN Watch (UN Singles Out Israel as World's Only Violator of Women's Rights; Iran, Saudi Arabia & Yemen Among the Voters - UN Watch)The incendiary balloon of international law (The incendiary balloon of international law)The UN continues its bias against Israel (The UN continues its bias against Israel)https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/08/singling_out_israel.html (https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/08/singling_out_israel.html)UNRWA CorruptionReport alleges ethical abuses at UN agency for Palestinians (Report alleges ethical abuses at UN agency for Palestinians)Ethics report accuses UNRWA leadership of abuse of power (Ethics report accuses UNRWA leadership of abuse of power)https://honestreporting.com/unrwa-refugees-explained/ (The UNRWA Refugee Controversy Explained)Swiss Funding Freeze in Wake of UNRWA Corruption Allegations Piles On Palestinian Refugee Agency’s Woes (Swiss Funding Freeze in Wake of UNRWA Corruption Allegations Piles On Palestinian Refugee Agency’s Woes)https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/31/schadenfreude-and-the-unrwa-scandal/ (Schadenfreude and the UNRWA Scandal)https://m.jpost.com/Middle-East/Belgium-suspends-UNRWA-funds-following-reports-of-ethical-misconduct-597561 (https://m.jpost.com/Middle-East/Belgium-suspends-UNRWA-funds-following-reports-of-ethical-misconduct-597561)https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-u-n-agency-for-palestinians-is-even-worse-than-you-imagine-11565131636 (Opinion | The U.N. Agency for Palestinians Is Even Worse Than You Imagine)https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-n-agency-for-palestinians-is-even-worse-than-you-imagine-11565131636?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=c3cfb658b0-Joffe_Romirowsky_CAMPAIGN_2019_08_09_01_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-c3cfb658b0-33930445&goal=0_086cfd423c-c3cfb658b0-33930445 (Opinion | The U.N. Agency for Palestinians Is Even Worse Than You Imagine)https://israelbehindthenews.com/who-benefits-from-unrwa-services/18913/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ibn-today (https://israelbehindthenews.com/who-benefits-from-unrwa-services/18913/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ibn-today)https://israelbehindthenews.com/another-example-of-how-unrwa-wastes-the-worlds-money/18930/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ibn-today (https://israelbehindthenews.com/another-example-of-how-unrwa-wastes-the-worlds-money/18930/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ibn-today)How Trump Started a Civil War Between the UN and Hamas (How Trump Started a Civil War Between the UN and Hamas)Confronting UNRWA education antisemitism at the UN | Israel Behind the News (https://israelbehindthenews.com/confronting-unrwa-education-antisemitism-at-the-un/18950/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ibn-today)

Spoiler Alert. I’m seriously pissed off.The pithy answer would be to say that it was because he got more votes however, thanks to the absurd way that America elects its president, that’s not actually true.There are two distinct reasons for Trump’s victory and I’m at a loss of which one to begin with if only because I’m tired of the abuse I’m getting for holding unpopular opinions. Still, I write on Quora and in general in order to foster debate, so trolls? Troll away.As Sheldon Cooper once said“I warned you thusly.”I began writing on Quora in earnest around the time the primary seasons were kicking off. It dawned on me, quite slowly that I could help disseminate ideas in ways I never had before. Many of my ideas are too radical for mainstream publication and although I made some inroads in academia, especially in writing books on political philosophy (Thank you royalty cheques I love you thusly,) the fact of the matter was that reaching large numbers of people overseas is never easy. I specialized in U.S. politics for a very good reason. I have no vested interest in your politics which helps me take a step back and think at least somewhat objectively.Three answers stand out in my mind as having achieved this.https://www.quora.com/Who-will-win-the-2016-U-S-presidential-election-and-why/answers/22797498https://www.quora.com/Why-do-so-many-people-from-Europe-want-Bernie-Sanders-to-be-the-President-of-the-United-States/answer/Ian-Jackson-16https://www.quora.com/Who-should-be-the-next-president-and-why/answer/Ian-Jackson-16In the first answer, I warned that Trump might win. In the second I offered a view of America as seen from Europe, a place far more progressive than the U.S.A has ever been. In the last, I set out — in considerable detail for a Quora answer – an economic philosophy that lead me to conclude that Sanders was the logical choice. He was the logical choice for two reasons.Firstly, he wanted to at least attempt to fix the things that needed fixing and secondly because I thought he would be very difficult to beat. People in American were craving change. That’s what Obama was about, but Obama had failed to deliver.Trump represented change. A horrible dystopian change, sure. But change none the less.1. The SilentMost of the answers listed above had a common theme and that theme was, and remains that economic inequality in the USA is out of control. I’ll try not to go over too much old ground here but a few salient points must be considered.The amount of money required in order to have economic security in the USA is set at $15 an hour over a full time working week. You know the drill, work 8 hours, sleep 8 hours, play 8 hours.I didn’t set this number by the way, it comes from the department of labor.In post truth America if you voted for Obama you are expected to give him an A+ which would be absurd score to give even Roosevelt. If you voted for someone else, you are expected to give him an F- which is equally absurd. Both sides of the political spectrum behave in equally delusional ways. Neither side wants to listen, compromise or admit any failings whatsoever.So, when Liberals congratulated themselves on having created so many new jobs and conservatives tried to downplay them by adding people who retired to their figures in order to dilute them we created two separate post-truth realities, neither of which described what was actually happening.So let’s do that now.The annual earnings for a full-time minimum-wage worker is $15,080 at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25. Full-time work means working 2,080 hours each year, which is 40 hours each week.And for all your toil, pretty much the only thing that Washington will prevent happening to you is starving to death. They fear that scenario and if you want to know why, type ‘Goldstone Economic Stress’ indicators into Google.The reality of the job market on the ground was massively different to what either political party was espousing because nobody was talking about what kind of jobs were being created. At minimum wage an adult would need to work 8 hours, sleep 8 hours and then work another 8 hours in order to feel secure. That’s not good enough.Part time workers and zero-hour contract workers were no better off, even if they were paid a little above minimum wage which many of them were not. In total 42% of your country earns less than $15 an hour and yes, that includes salaried workers. Do the maths if you’re not convinced, it’s not difficult.The U.S. Census Bureau reported in September 2014 that: U.S. real (inflation adjusted) median household income was $51,939 in 2013 versus $51,759 in 2012, statistically unchanged. In 2013, real median household income was 8.0 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the latest recession.So yeah, you’re poorer under Obama and the fact that you would have been even poorer under Romney isn’t good enough. And don’t even bother in the comments whining to me about the numbers I’m using. I’m so past the post truth BS. So i’ll say again, Obama, the cool dude that I’d love to hang out with made you all poorer with a song i like to call “Tax cuts for the rich and other SNAFU’s.” He voted to renew the Patriot act — you know the one that he opposed as a senator — and now look see! Donald Trump can read the emails of his enemies! Hurray! How To Protect Yourself From State Surveillance Once Trump Takes Over (Video)Obama made the same promises Clinton was making and he didn’t deliver on many of them. Worse, he betrayed liberals with his support of TPP, a bill that not only grants corporations the right to sue your country in secret courts but will also devastate certain industries. And the Patriot Act. Did I mention that Trump will be able to listen into phone calls too? If I were Rosie O'Donnell right now, I’d be scared.Don’t get me wrong. Free trade is good. But it’s also fundamentally and unavoidably asymmetrical in composition. The absolute key to effective free trade is that those on the downside of the deal are compensated. From the perspective of a Liberal thinker this is non negotiable. I’ve covered my objections to TPP elsewhere but suffice to say that Obama knows it will devastate certain industries but his belief in the power of the market and reliance on vested interests means he can do nothing about it.Go ahead and read it, they don’t deny it, they juts use flowery language in order to bore you to death.So, let’s look at that from a different — yet to happen — perspective first and then move on to what happened to the USA in recent decades.There are approximately $3.5 million truckers in the USA.And they are all fucked.The median annual wage for a trucker that works for a private fleet, such as a truck driver employed by Walmart, is $73,000, according to ATA. The Labor Department pegs the median annual salary for all truck drivers at around $40,000. That’s over double the minimum wage, so these truckers have economic security, if only just.As of 2012, in the United States: the total number of taxi cab drivers is 233,900; the average annual salary of a taxi cab driver is $22,820. These people have no economic security but it doesn’t really matter because they are fucked too.It’s Google’s fault.Well, sort of. Because the reality of driverless cars is almost upon us.The jury is out, some say 2020 some say 2025, some later and some earlier. Regardless, they are coming. The technology will improve over time and commercial fleets will be seduced by the cost savings. Automated taxis might be scary at first but they will force the human driven competition to its knees regardless. And then they will jack the price back up to where it was when they had to pay drivers.What to do with these people representing around 3% of your workplace. What do we do when they all find that the only thing they are trained for is no longer needed?Washington’s solution, GOP and Democrat alike is simple. Obama, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Clinton, (Gore,) Reagan, Carter, Nixon, it really makes little difference.They think these people can go fuck themselves.OK, maybe not Carter…The ex truckers can sit in shanty towns drinking rain water for all the political elite care. Whole towns can become overgrown piles of manure and when despair leads to drink and drugs these people can be policed. The 1994 crime bill should do nicely for that. Another piece of right-wing Democratic legislation.They will read their emails and their tweets and pass bills that allow police to enter premises without warrants. You know the kind of thing I’m talking about. The shit the British were pulling in the run up to the 1776 ‘referendum.’Now, you cannot stop the march of technology, so being a Luddite about it is no good. Truckers will find the competition tighten; they will be asked to work longer hours for less pay. There will be layoffs and strikes and news stories and op-ed pieces but the end result will be the same. A slew of men – and it is mostly men—with no training in anything else, having worked jobs that left little room for savings will be left virtually destitute. With one eye on French Revolution’s food riots, the government, will give them food aid but little else. There are already over 50 million Americans on food stamps.In the richest country in the world.We know that this is how they will be treated because this is how other industries have been treated. Coal, Steel, car manufacturing. It all dried up; in some cases, the fault lay in NAFTA, the trade deal sponsored by Bill Clinton.The people effected were left to stew in their memories. Lacking any real political education, they came to some false conclusions. They looked at net immigration and said“Aha, they took our jobs!”And we called them racists, and deplorables, even though, deep down we knew that most of them were not. What the hell were you all thinking? Was calling people names your go to place as an effective way to convince people of the rightness of your ideas? The left were too busy being outraged by any and every opinion that did not precisely match their own to pick up a book by John Stewart Mill on the virtues of debate. Debate was stifled. Some people don’t like gay people. My dad doesn’t like gay people! I don’t throw shit at him, I talk to him about it and when I fail to change his mind I walk away and try a different line of debate the next time it comes up.Clinton would just call him a deplorable.And so he’d vote for Trump.Donald fucking Trump!We just gave the power of the CIA, the FBI, NSA and other agencies to a revenge-obsessed, misogynistic, racist with an ego the size Olympus Mons.The left focused on the culture war almost exclusively. Vote Clinton because she would never say the word ‘pussy.’ not in public anyway. Vote Clinton because she cares about Lesbian marriages or at least she has done since 2013 when she changed her mind because she wanted lesbians to vote for her. Vote Clinton because people have accused Trump of being a vile womanizer. A democrat would never act liek that. Inless his name is Weiner, or Kennedy that is. Unless his name is Bill that is.Oh, yes, LGBTQ not TPP, never that. Never mind too big to fail; we congratulated ourselves on the fact that gay marriage was a ‘thing’ now and that we had an African American in office. A guy that we liked that we voted for.Look-see, how can we be racist? We voted for a Black man! Never mind the fact that the true racist position is being OK with the fact that African Americans have the the lowest median income in the country (At around $35,00)Oh no, there’s nothing racist about the fact that their average income is only just above the poverty line. Never mind that Democrats under Bill Clinton passed the the $30 billion crime bill that put an addition 100,000 police officers on the streets and continued the trend toward increased incarceration that began in the early 1970s, and quadrupled in the ensuing four decades. (A two-year study by the National Research Council concluded that the increase was historically unprecedented, that the U.S. far outpaced the incarceration rates elsewhere in the world, and that high incarceration rates have disproportionately affected Hispanic and black communities.)That’s not racism! That’s just the way shit falls man. It’s not like somebody said the N word or something!Well it’s not good enough.I’d honestly rather vote for a guy who uses the N word and want’s to do something about the number of Black people locked up for no good reason than someone like Clinton who prances about on stage with ethnically diverse celebrity endorsements without so much as addressing the elephant in the fucking cell.If you meet a racist it’s your responsibility to talk to them, to debate with them, not just fling mud and get them fired from their jobs. That might make you feel better but it’s not how the left works and if you really really want to play that game, well; you can always have Donald ‘I’m going to nuke Isis’ Trump as president if you want.Because it seems to me that that is exactly what Democrats want. They want to be self righteous far more than they ever want to be right. They’d rather re-post a meme on Facebook and share pictures of organic couscous with each other than actually do something about the reality on the ground. You know what? If half your country is either unemployed, underemployed or underpaid and thinks that Immigration is to blame then that is your problem too.Unless you want Donald Trump to appoint KKK sympathizers to your government that is.The rich soaked all the wealth up like a sponge and ignored the lessons I used to teach as part of politics 101. Leave as much and as good.John Locke. Give him a read.The urban poor were angry and were mocked for the lack of political education that they had never been given. Liberal American demurred. Some saw their plight but most did not. They were ‘hicks’ white trash scum, deplorables who were just not modern enough to be taken seriously.It was almost like living in piece of shit towns with poisonous water, intermittent electricity, little or no job prospects and no access to the internet had isolated them from cultural elitism. Who would have thought? which genius decided that despite numbering in the millions, that it didn’t really matter what happened to them?We have a word for these people in politics. We call them the subaltern. The subaltern are often on the fringes of society and are often reviled. They are modern lepers, mocked for their mullets, clam shell cell phones and lack of education. Few of us noticed that the subaltern began to expand as wealth was sucked into the top 1%.Sanders noticed. I noticed.The DNC and the majority of its supporters did not.We put things in place all right, stuff that needed to be addressed; statutory rights came first and quite right too but we didn’t stop there. If anyone said something that smelt even slightly of Islamophobia we pilloried them, fired them. We hounded them like they were some kind of sex pests instead of engaging them in an actual debate. We never considered that they were minsinformed or even for the briefest second that they had a point. We won the culture war and any distention from that was lynched on social media.Freedom of religion? Give me a fucking break. What freedom did we give people to criticize religions they didn’t like? None. We were too scared what people might think.Personally i think all religions, Islam and Christianity included kind of sucks. Watch people unfollow me for saying so. i Could care less at this point.And so, these forgotten people stopped complaining. They knew what they would get if they did. But they waited for an opportunity to act. The majority of Trump’s supporters are not racist I mean, sure some of them are and yes, they supported one in Trump that’s true; but the fact remains that they were desperate.As we squabbled with them about bathroom rights it never occurred to them that we might just accept that the idea of a transgender person in a bathroom upset some people. No compromise was offered. nobody suggested that we have a sit down ad talk about it. No we just hurled more insults at them because we were just so-much-more evolved.It’s not like this was the only thing that mattered anyway. i mean, sure, put it on the list. But make it a long list that begins with the line“People need to be able to make rent.”Once we got that one sorted we could move onto public restrooms and until ushc a time maybe we could show our solidarity with the LGBTQ community by all having a piss before we leave the house and making it a non-issue.Because pretty much everything other than basic economic fairness has to be a secondary consideration. Unless you want, President Trump that is.Because what other choice did we give them?Oh, yeah.2. HRCNow. Let’s talk about Hillary but before we do, we still have to soothe some oversensitive, delusional minds.I don’t hate her hair or her voice or her sense of dress. I don’t hate her because she’s a woman or because of her husband or because she’s too blonde or not blonde enough or anything like that. I certainly don’t hate her because of her emails. And I don’t hate her because she’s a woman. In a recent list of 8 people who might try to take Trump down in 2020, three were women and I would happily vote for three of them although the third —and god help us if she tried to run again —I would not vote for under any circumstances. You know who I’m talking about.No, I don’t hate her but I am angry at her, oh yes. We simply aren’t and never have been on the same page when it comes to politics. It’s amazing, how many times I was called a misogynist for holding opinions that did not match her worshipfulness.I should also point out that I passionately supported her once Sanders was out of the race. A Clinton presidency would have been preferable to a Trump presidency and the salient point of comfort to me was that having a woman in the White House as president was long overdue.So, I supported her. I urged people to vote for her and got flack from all sides. Bernie fans thought me a traitor, Trump supporters thought me a madman. The day of the election Liberals were mocking my warning that Trump was going to win.Ah well.Here’s the thing about Clinton. Actually, it’s two things and some of you are not going to like either of them. But that’s OK too because this election has taught me a lesson.Some people cannot be reached. Your country is at the cutting edge of a post truth political world and if you have not come to the conclusion that HRC was as deeply flawed a candidate as you could have fielded, then you are lost to tribalism and there’s little I or indeed anyone else can do to break you from your reverie.I have zero sympathy for her. None. And I have little patience for those who do. She should have been so much better.To begin with.With all the crap that was going on in America, you decided to run with a corporatist. You decided to run with one of the most unpopular candidates of all time. You decided to run with a woman who had been cozying up to Wall Street her entire life. A woman who openly admitted in her speech to Goldman Sachs that you had to lie to the plebs with a public and private positions and we all said.“Oh man, c’mon, Lincoln did that too, she’s just being a politician!”Well buckle up; people are sick of the whole ‘being a politician’ thing.I say ‘you’ but i really mean the DNC. They had tried to plant a Clinton shaped hole in the election back in 2008 with their corrupt Super Delegate system but had to give up in the face of overwhelming popular support for Obama.Fuck it they said. We’ll play her again 2016. the fact that nobody seems to like her? That’s their problem!It’s true that Clinton got an unfair shake of the stick by the right-wing media who despised her but it’s a huge mistake to think that that is the only reason people disliked her. She was a hawk, not only voting for Iraq but pressing for foreign action whenever the opportunity arose. She parsed every sentence she ever uttered; her concession speech was one of the few times we got to see her speak from the heart. She lied when she didn’t have to, was secretive to the point of paranoia. Everything she did was calculated to help her win the office of the president and yes, I know she was a woman living in a man’s world and thus had to overcompensate but she overcompensated way, way too much.She came across as having no soul. She needed to appeal to moderates or so the DNC insisted and it led to some truly horrific positions.1. She supported the death penalty2. She claimed to be a moderate when speaking to a moderate crowd.3. She claimed to be a progressive when speaking to a progressive crowd.4. She refused to support Gay marriage until the very last minute.5. She called the TPP the gold standard and then decided it wasn’t when she saw the wind change.6. She supported her husband’s 1994 crime bill famously using the phrase Super Predators.7. She supported the repeal of Glass Steagall and thus contributed to the 2007 financial crisis.8. Rather than trying to appease the left with a Sanders, Warren or Al Franken choice for VP she tried to please her Wall Street buddies with the short stack of pancakes that is Tim KaineI could go on… no honestly I could, I’ve been saying this for years. Seriosuly Hilalry fucking Clinton? Was it a joke? Were we being trolled? Nobody liked her for god’s sake! She was too upset to give a concession speech on the night itself. I suspect she hadn’t bothered to write one. Either way, ‘Boo-Hoo’ I couldn’t care less.If she had a drop of integrity she would have dropped out when she saw her popularity ratings. ‘Go for it Sanders’ she would have said, ‘the most important thing is stopping that plate of fried chicken with busy hands from taking the White House.’ If she had any — excuse the phrase — balls at all she would have told Wall Street to suck them and picked Warren or Sanders for VP in order to unify the two wings. But oh no, she had to scrape the creme out of an Oreo and shove it into a suit in order to reassure her paymasters that if she keeled over mid-term they wouldn’t have to deal with a president who had a soul.“Look everyone, it’s Tim Kaine, isn’t he beige?”Yes he is. He really is.The great thing about being as rich as Clinton is is that Trump’s vile ideology won’t affect her in any way shape or form. She can go by herslf a huge chalet in Switzerland if things get real bad but even if not, medicare, cuts to the minimum wage, mass deportations. Not actually her problem thank you very much.Hillary Clinton is way, way to the right of Theresa May, the British, conservative Prime Minister in almost every way and we are supposed to think she’s a progressive? I could concuss myself with face-palms just thinking about it.i think I might.And none of it matters because Clinton is entitled to all those positions and beliefs. It was the attempt to appeal to the middle and the left simultaneously whilst secretly being right of center on most non-culture war issues.And that’s not the worst of it.Actually, yes, it was rigged.The DNC have an important job to do. They have to facilitate the election of political candidates and not just for presidential races either. That’s a big job and it involves a lot of work that we won’t go into here but suffice to say vetting, fundraising, grass roots campaigning and so on take up a lot of time and a lot of energy.What they are not supposed to be doing is selecting the candidate themselves. That’s one of those vote things.The DNC doesn’t like this idea at all which is why they have a Super Delegate system in the first place. They are a little bit scared of the idea of an ‘excess of democracy’ where the people of the party might select someone a little too ‘off message.’ Somebody who might do what is good for the country as opposed to the oligarchy.Someone like Sanders perhaps? Can’t have that, nope.And you took it! I mean c’mon people, do you not see the super delegates for what they are? Do you need it spelled out to you? It’s the Democratic parties way of keeping you at arms length. ‘Oh give me a group hug people and we’ll tell you who to vote for while we huddle.’Come along and vote people, we have to, you understand, stack the deck though, we cannot have you ‘shitmunchers’ make any actual decisions, laws no.I had to watch Clinton act in mock outrage when Trump suggested the election was rigged.“That’s horrible.” she said.Yes, it was. But then it was horrible when you rigged the primaries too.Of the 4,765 total Democratic delegates, 714 are superdelegates, which are usually Democratic members of Congress, Governors, former Presidents, and other party leaders and elected officials. They are not required to indicate preference for a candidate. In total 570 of them voted for Clinton and just 44 for Sanders. Now, 27,834,835 people voted in the Democratic primaries which means that Clinton’s husband — as a super delegate himself — was granted the equivalent voting power of 5,841 grass roots activists. He’s worth nearly six thousand times what you are. What does the DNC have to do? Stamp the word ‘Pleb’ on your foreheads?How the people who kicked Great Britain’s ass in 1776 over questions of representation can be satisfied with this without using their own socks as a sick bag is genuinely beyond me.Now, Clinton could have beaten Sanders fair and square. He’s not a perfect candidate, there’s no such thing y’all.There are areas that an astute politician could have exploited and taken him on head to head . In fact, his main advantage, indeed his main USP is his integrity. Sanders meant what he said and even if Congress had blocked much of what he tried to implement, even if you disagree with his politics, few would deny that he’s an honest guy.Did Clinton confront him on the issues?Did she hell.Oh, she emulated him when she thought it prudent to do so. What was it the leak email called it? Oh yes.In January 2016, in an email exchange, Clinton speech writer Dan Schwerin worried that Clinton was failing to connect with younger voters stating that they needed to:“…Disaggregate Bernie’s voters from Bernie himself, so the former feel like they can keep shaping the party even after the latter rides off into the sunset … None of this changes the basic problem that compared to Bernie we’re never going to be the ‘change candidate’ and so we’re either confident in our own identity or we’re chasing him and offering ourselves as a pale imitation.”The pale imitation. The ‘we cannot be the candidate of change.’I guess that means that we’ll just let Trump win then!Because Sanders never stood a chance. They never gave him one. In leaked emails, they openly mocked him. They gave Clinton sneaky peaks of debate questions. Did she call the police? Did she stop the moderator in her tracks and say ‘I’m not answering that because CNN gave it to me two weeks ago?’ Did she forward the email to Sanders with RE: In the interest of fairness written on it?Did she hell.During the debates, she was given preferential treatment. This isn’t even speculation, these are facts.In an answer, I wrote last march when discussing the Florida debate that took place that month I wrote:Hillary's speaking time total: 1409 sec or 23:29 | interrupted 10 times (not including clarification/follow-up)Bernie's speaking time total: 1071 sec or 17:51 | interrupted 25 times (not including follow-ups)Hillary spoke 32% longer, moderators interrupted Bernie 150% moreNow this itself does not demonstrate media bias, it only shows that the moderators were not treating both candidates equally; they are fallible and it's not like they could control Clinton half the time. But if examples like this all we had to go on then I'd suggest that we were all suffering from a good old case of paranoia; suck it up I'd say, they asked her some tough questions too.Little did I know that she had a heads up on the ‘toughies.’You’re all deplorable in the eyes of this elite which is why you need to take control of the DNC back. I’ll tackle that in another question.Had Clinton beaten Sanders fair and square, I honestly believe that the ‘Never Hillary’ camp would have been something of a mewling kitten. Some would have sulked I’m sure but most would have just accepted it as politics and moved on to support Clinton.Would she have won?We’ll never know.What we do know is that Clinton’s treatment of Sanders confirmed what many of us suspected. She was establishment in the worst possible way.The DNC have learned nothing from any of this. Indeed, they already seem intent on repeating the mistakes of 2016. there are calls to field Tim Kaine in 2020.For general musings or indeed if you want to contact me / yell at me or ask for my phone number, you can contact me via Twitter. You can also read my work at Progressive Liberal or my medium page and for a break in politics, or if you just want to enjoy my British accent I host a regular podcast called the Sanfu Revue where I discuss having forced myself to watch terrible movies so that you don’t have to.Disclaimer, this answer links back to some relevant articles I wrote.