There Goes The Neighbourhood

     In or about 80 AD, the Emperor Hadrian, in response and a reaction to constant uprisings and rebellions in Judea, erased the name Judea that had existed for a thousand years, and supplanted it with Syria Palestinia.  THAT moment was the first time Palestinia was used and in centuries after that moment, it became shortened to Palestine.  That is the birth of Palestine. NOT  It exists solely because Hadrian hated the Jews constant rebellion and he believed he would erase their name and they would cease to be a problem (or something like that).   Israel has existed for ... well, Abraham was promised a land, Joshua renamed it, and Jesus called it Israel ... so for over 2000 years (better estimate/number is 4000 years) Israel has existed. Palestine ... since Hadrian but even then, it wasn't Palestinians, it was a label for a land mass not a people.  That didn't happen until after the British occupation.   To argue Hamas has some ri...

  Sweden, long the calmest place on earth.  Where people stop and have fika and coffee, and live their lives privately and quietly.  Where national celebrations are barely a whisper, and even then it is done quietly and calmly.  Swedes have lived a very calm and safe lifestyle for decades and with the demise of the Soviet Empire, Sweden rose up and stretched out, and began to show itself for what it was and had become, a socialist paradise.   I mean socialist in the nicest possible way - people are unemployed for months, but they really aren't, they are like on sabbatical in a way, while someone else does their job and they still get paid for not working.  The government provided parents with funds for every kid they had, and then provided free childcare for those children.   They have a calm color scheme - unusual and radical colors are not acceptable as home colors.  Councils decide whether you are in conformity or not, and if yo are n...

  It is interesting that somehow Ashraf Amra//Anadolu Agency via Getty Images has a photo of Hamas blasting down a fence to enter into Israel to begin their murderous spree.  Interesting.  How did the photographer know to be there at that moment!!  Hmm.  In 2000, Israel made efforts that would have provided peace, security, and an opportunity for the Palestinian people to begin moving forward in peace and safety.  They chose the alternative.  It was not Israel, it was Arafat. Prime Minister Barak offered to withdraw from 95% of Judea and Samaria, all of Gaza, and half of Jerusalem.  The response - war against Israel in September 2000.  Those areas would be free of Jews.  Their homes and villages (hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews) would be bulldozed down, to make way for the Palestinians to live Jew-free. For Arafat that wasn't enough.  There was no desire for peace as his deputy Faisal Husseini stated that all discussion of pea...

     Harvard College, founded in the 17th century in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  It started as a normal school in 1636, teaching teachers to teach ... and became one of the most prestigious schools in the world, its library system and financial endowment larger than those of any other.   The annual undergraduate tuition was $300 in the 1920s and $400 in the 1930s, doubling to $800 in 1953. It reached $2,600 in 1970 and $22,700 in 2000.  By 2023, a student living on campus was paying $54,000 for tuition, and another $13,000 for housing, $8,000 for food with another $4,900 in various fees.  It is indeed a marvel.  Alumni are luminaries in every world -  Robert Frost, BF Skinner, W.E.B. DuBois, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson are but a few.  The intellect and skill.  The reasoning and rational mind of those men, coupled with women like Helen Keller and many others of note, make Harvard an institution to dream of attending. ...