Saturday Digest Vol. 3, Issue 9
Sifting through sources all week to deliver you real, interesting news. Curated by a professional journalist and delivered to your inbox every Saturday.
“So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.” — Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
The above Kurt Vonnegut quote is something of a tribute to Miss Peggy, the longtime children’s librarian at the Warren Public Library. She just retired last week, and received a very well-deserved recognition from the town council for her work helping generations of Warrenites learn how to read, write, socialize, and be creative. Like so many other Warren kids, my brothers and I were lucky enough to attend Miss Peggy’s weekly story time regularly before we were old enough to enroll in school.
George Hail Library is a little stone castle, the perfect place to fall in love with books, and Miss Peggy was the matchmaker who made it happen. My brother Eli has always been more into the visual arts, and I know he can still recount specific art projects (like The Rainbow Fish) we did during the crafting segment of story time. Miss Peggy was committed to helping all kinds of young learners engage with the world and with their creative selves, and she has an absolutely massive legacy in the town of Warren; I’m willing to bet there are at least a few families for whom Miss Peggy remembers helping the children, their parents, and maybe even their grandparents learn how to read.
The Vonnegut quote is also a tribute to a recent local legislative success: Rhode Island’s state House of Representatives passed The Freedom to Read Act to defend libraries against attempted censorship and book-banning campaigns. Many of Rhode Island’s small towns have wonderful libraries and wonderful librarians, and I would encourage all of my readers to use their local libraries as community hubs and take full advantage of the many free resources they offer — not least of which is the helpful expertise of the librarians at the front desk.
If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please consider sharing it around to help me reach new readers — a personal recommendation can go a long way. Readers and sources can always contact me at wolfangwritingsolutions@gmail.com.
World
1. “The very creators of AI technology see a 1 in 10, maybe 1 in 5, chance it wipes away our species” (Axios)
“Axios research shows at least 10 people have quit the biggest AI companies over grave concerns about the technology's power, including its potential to wipe away humanity. If it were one or two people, the cases would be easy to dismiss as nutty outliers. But several top execs at several top companies, all with similar warnings? Seems worth wondering: Well, what if they're right?” — Axios
From Axios’ "Behind the Curtain” column published June 9, 2025:
There's a term the critics and optimists share: p(doom). It means the probability that superintelligent AI destroys humanity.
[Elon Musk has put the risk as high as 20% that AI could destroy the world (in an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast), so 20% would be his p(doom) value.]
On a recent podcast with Lex Fridman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, an AI architect and optimist, conceded: "I'm optimistic on the p(doom) scenarios, but ...the underlying risk is actually pretty high."
But Pichai also argued that the higher it gets, the more likely that humanity will rally to prevent catastrophe.
Fridman, himself a scientist and AI researcher, said his p(doom) is about 10%.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is on the record pegging p(doom) in the same neighborhood as Musk's: 10-25%.
Stop and soak that in: The very makers of AI, all of whom concede they don't know with precision how it actually works, see a 1 in 10, maybe 1 in 5, chance it wipes away our species. Would you get on a plane at those odds? Would you build a plane and let others on at those odds?
Once upon a time, this doomsday scenario was the province of fantasy movies. Now, it's a common debate among those building large language models (LLMs) at giants like Google and OpenAI and Meta. To some, the better the models get, the more this fantastical fear seems eerily realistic.
Here is one more excerpt:
What's coming: You'll hear more and more about artificial general intelligence (AGI), the forerunner to superintelligence. There's no strict definition of AGI, but independent thought and action at advanced human levels is a big part of it. The big companies think they're close to achieving this — if not in the next year or so, soon thereafter. Pichai thinks it's "a bit longer" than five years off. Others say sooner.
Both pessimists and optimists agree that when AGI-level performance is unleashed, it'll be past time to snap to attention.
Once the models can start to think and act on their own, what's to stop them from going rogue and doing what they want, based on what they calculate is their self-interest? Absent a much, much deeper understanding of how LLMs work than we have today, the answer is: Not much.
In testing, engineers have found repeated examples of LLMs trying to trick humans about their intent and ambitions. Imagine the cleverness of the AGI-level ones.
You'd need some mechanism to know the LLMs possess this capability before they're used or released in the wild — then a foolproof kill switch to stop them.
So you're left trusting the companies won't let this happen — even though they're under tremendous pressure from shareholders, bosses and even the government to be first to produce superhuman intelligence.
Right now, the companies voluntarily share their model capabilities with a few people in government. But not to Congress or any other third party with teeth.
US Army testing roll out of gun-mounted robot dogs in Middle East (The Independent 10/3/24)
A second “Behind the Curtain” column published on June 9 is also about AI:
The scariest AI reality: the companies building them don't know exactly why or how they work (Axios)
Sit with that for a moment. The most powerful companies, racing to build the most powerful superhuman intelligence capabilities — ones they readily admit occasionally go rogue to make things up, or even threaten their users — don't know why their machines do what they do.
The U. S. House of Representatives, despite knowing so little about AI, tucked language into President Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" that would prohibit states and localities from any AI regulations for 10 years. The Senate is considering limitations on the provision.
2. Israeli government furious as France shuts weapons stands at Paris Airshow (Reuters)
France shut down the main Israeli company stands at the Paris Airshow on Monday for refusing to remove attack weapons from display, sparking a furious response from Israel.
According to a Reuters report filed from the outlet’s Jerusalem bureau on June 16, the office of French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said it had told all exhibitors ahead of the show that offensive weapons would be prohibited from display and that Israel's embassy in Paris had agreed to this.
Bayrou’s office further stated that the companies could resume their exhibits if they complied with this requirement.
Stands including those of Israeli arms manufacturers Elbit Systems, Rafael, IAI, and Uvision were blocked off with black partitions before the start of the world's biggest aviation trade fair because they ignored the rule they had agreed to and put attack weapons on display. Smaller Israeli stands which didn't have hardware on display, as well as an Israeli Ministry of Defense stand, remained open.
Reuters reported on the Israeli government’s response — a predictably raving and raging accusation of antisemitism and foul play. Even when Israeli weapons companies are at a trade fair marketing attack hardware in open violation of event guidelines, Israel somehow emerges a victim:
Bayrou told reporters that given France's diplomatic stance, and "in particular its ... very great concern about Gaza", the government had felt it unacceptable for attack weapons to be on show.
But Israel's defence ministry reacted with fury.
"This outrageous and unprecedented decision reeks of policy-driven and commercial considerations," it said in a statement.
"The French are hiding behind supposedly political considerations to exclude Israeli offensive weapons from an international exhibition - weapons that compete with French industries."
The ministry later added it was filing court petitions against the decision.
IAI's president and CEO, Boaz Levy, said the black partitions were reminiscent of "the dark days of when Jews were segmented from European society".
Two U.S. Republican politicians attending the air show also criticised the French move.
Outside the blacked-out Israeli stalls, Reuters sought comment from two of the United States’ dimmest shining lights:
Republican Governor of Arkansas Sarah Huckabee Sanders (daughter of the fundamentalist Christian U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, she has attracted some big “defense” contracts to her state over the past few years) described the decision as "pretty absurd” and later criticized the French decision on social media.
Republican Alabama Senator Katie Britt was also there are the Airshow and criticized the decision to insist on adherence to the pre-established rules of the show as "short-sighted."
Both women have some interesting financial connections to pro-Israel institutions, though they are far from the only American politicians who fall into that category.
In a video Sanders included in her social media post, the governor mentioned that "one of those companies has a pretty significant presence in our state," a reference to Israeli arms manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which broke ground on a joint facility with RTX (Raytheon) in East Camden, Arkansas last year — a deal brokered by Sanders when she attended last year’s Paris Airshow.
The facility is a $63 million missile factory and comes with 60 American jobs, good high-paying jobs fabricating death machines. At its groundbreaking in February 2024, Senator John Boozman said, “Securing East Camden’s position as the arsenal of democracy has always been our vision.”
A Raytheon press release from October 26, 2023:
Through the established Raytheon-Rafael Area Protection Systems joint venture, the companies have committed to a $33 million capital investment to establish the new facility. Once operational, the facility will produce missiles for the U.S. Marine Corps and other allied partners.
"This new Camden site will be the first all-up-round production facility in the U.S. to help support the Armed Forces and allies across the globe with this highly capable air-defense missile," said Raytheon's Tom Laliberty, president of Land & Air Defense Systems and Raytheon-Rafael Area Protection Systems chairman of the board. "This new facility will allow us to expand our presence in Camden and further benefit from the resident talent and expertise of this aerospace and defense epicenter."
Raytheon and Rafael have teamed for over a decade on [Israel’s] Iron Dome, which has more than 5,000 operational intercepts and a success rate exceeding 90% [this number may no longer be in the true in the wake of last week’s strikes from Iran —ZW]. The U.S. version of the Iron Dome Weapon System's Tamir, SkyHunter, is a medium-range air defense weapon designed to counter a range of threats, including cruise missiles, manned and unmanned aircraft, rockets, artillery and mortars. SkyHunter missiles will be produced for the U.S. Marine Corps Medium Range Intercept Capability, or MRIC, program.
Always worth mentioning that Raytheon is among the highest taxpayers in the town of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and is also the town’s largest employer. The company’s Integrated Defense Systems division, which specializes among other things in ground-based and sea-based radars for air and missile defense, Navy radar and sonar, and torpedo and naval mine countermeasures, is located on West Main Road.
What I mean to say here is that our sleepy small-town lives are not as disconnected from all of this as we would like to believe.
National
1. ICE awards tech company Palantir $30 million to build surveillance platform for mass deportations (Axios Denver)
The company has been an ICE contractor for more than a decade, spanning the Obama and Biden administrations, but its new scope of work signals an escalating role in immigration enforcement under President Trump.
In mid-April, ICE awarded Denver-based software titan Palantir a $30 million contract to deliver a new platform — the Immigration Lifecycle Operating System (ImmigrationOS) — by Sept. 25, per federal records.
Axios Denver’s Alayna Alvarez reports that the prototype will give ICE "near real-time visibility" on people self-deporting from the U.S., according to those records. The agency intends to use the Palantir-developed platform to “track and manage deportations, monitor visa overstays and target transnational criminal organizations.”
Palantir spokesperson Lisa Gordon did not answer Axios Denver's questions about the company's deepening role in federal immigration operations.
In a publicly available contract justification document, ICE says it has an "urgent and compelling" need for the new system and Palantir is the "only source" capable of delivering it in time.
"If you're a first-rate programmer, there are a huge number of other places you can go work rather than at the company building the infrastructure of the police state." — Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator
For a deeper dive into Palantir’s partnership with ICE, check out this piece published by Wired business reporter Caroline Haskins back in April:
ICE Is Paying Palantir $30 Million to Build ‘ImmigrationOS’ Surveillance Platform (Wired)
Excerpt:
ICE’s document does not specify the data sources Palantir would pull from to power ImmigrationOS. However, it says that Palantir could “configure” the case management system that it has provided to ICE since 2014.
Palantir has done work at various other government agencies as early as 2007. Aside from ICE, it has worked with the US Army, Air Force, Navy, Internal Revenue Service, and Federal Bureau of Investigation. As reported by WIRED, Palantir is currently helping Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) build a brand-new “mega API” at the IRS that could search for records across all the different databases that the agency maintains.
Last week, 404 Media reported that a recent version of Palantir’s case-management system for ICE allows agents to search for people based on “hundreds of different, highly specific categories,” including how a person entered the country, their current legal status, and their country of origin. It also includes a person’s hair and eye color, whether they have scars or tattoos, and their license-plate reader data, which would provide detailed location data about where that person travels by car.
These functionalities have been mentioned in a government privacy assessment published in 2016, and it’s not clear what new information may have been integrated into the case management system over the past four years.
This week’s $30 million award is an addition to an existing Palantir contract penned in 2022, originally worth about $17 million, for work on ICE’s case management system. The agency has increased the value of the contract five times prior to this month; the largest was a $19 million increase in September 2023.
The contract’s ImmigrationOS update was first documented on April 11 in a government-run database tracking federal spending. The entry had a 248-character description of the change. The five-page document ICE published Thursday, meanwhile, has a more detailed description of Palantir’s expected services for the agency.
2. There Is No Such Thing as a Quick U.S. War on Iran (Murtaza Hussain for Drop Site News)
On Wednesday afternoon (6/18), Trump repeated to reporters in the Oval Office that he hadn’t made a decision on striking Iran. He also repeated the claim, contradicted by U.S. intelligence assessments, that Iran is weeks away from a nuclear weapon.
wrote on Wednesday 6/19 about the Israeli government’s desire for the United States to get involved in a war with Iran:
Despite their statements about the nuclear program and desire for U.S. help in addressing it, Israeli officials have been open that their own objectives are much broader. In recent days, Israeli officials have suggested that their real aim is U.S.-supported “regime change” in Iran, or even the wholesale partition and destruction of the country itself, for which Tel Aviv would require U.S. military assistance over an extended period.
The campaign is the culmination of a decades-long effort by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the neoconservative movement and would succeed in pinning the U.S. into a conflict with Iran that is opposed by the non-interventionist faction of Trump’s MAGA base.
Hussain also recapped the deadly exchange of fire which has already occurred between Israel and Iran up to this past Wednesday:
[these numbers will be outdated by the time the Digest is published on Saturday — ZW]
The current war has already been highly destructive, even before the U.S. may become a direct party to the fighting. Damage from Iranian attacks is subject to suppression by Israel’s military censor, and the Israeli government has launched a wide crackdown on reporting of the attacks. But images on Israeli Telegram channels have shown damage to some critical military and intelligence sites, as well as infrastructure like refineries and potentially anti-missile air defense batteries.
The Israeli government has so far confirmed at least 24 deaths from Iranian attacks. Inside Iran, the toll has been far more severe. Death toll estimates range from 224 to over 600 according to human rights groups, with the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education also reporting 1,481 wounded.
In a particularly shocking incident, on Monday the Iranian state broadcaster was hit while live on air in an attack that killed two people. The attack forced television anchors to flee mid-broadcast though they returned later in the day to continue their program. The Israeli government claimed responsibility for the attack, with Israeli defense minister Israel Katz saying that they had hit the "propaganda and incitement broadcasting authority of the Iranian regime."
Israeli attacks have also hit Iranian military positions outside of major cities, including ballistic missile bases and airfields. But most of the dead in Tehran are reported to be civilians.
And on President Donald Trump’s messaging about possible U.S. escalation of the conflict, particularly Trump’s recent social media mantra of “unconditional surrender”:
After weeks of conflicted messaging about the topic, Trump himself has embraced a consistently aggressive message towards Tehran in recent days, demanding “unconditional surrender” from Iran on repeated occasions.
Trump has also pushed back against the conclusions of his own officials who have stated that no imminent risk of an Iranian nuclear weapon exists. Asked this week by reporters aboard Air Force One about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony in March that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, Trump replied, "I don't care what she said. I think they were very close.”
If you are not ready to become a paid monthly subscriber, but you enjoy reading this post, please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-fi to support my writing. I love all of my free subscribers, but a small donation of any amount is incredibly helpful. —Zane
AIPAC Demands Democrats “Stand With Israel” on Iran (Drop Site News)
The pro-Israel lobbying group has sent a flurry of communications to members of Congress, citing specific language for them to parrot in support of Israel’s strikes on Iran.
Story by
, , , and . This is a collaboration with The American Prospect:The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been furiously urging House Democrats to release messages of steadfast support for Israel in its war with Iran, the Prospect and Drop Site News have learned, even as bipartisan lawmakers come together on a War Powers Act resolution to prevent U.S. troops or funds being used in yet another Middle East conflagration.
One member [of Congress] relayed that a colleague had received literally 100 phone calls from members of AIPAC and its allied pressure groups. AIPAC wants House Democratic members to state explicitly that they “stand with Israel” in its actions against Iran aimed at destroying the Islamic Republic’s nuclear capability, and add that Iran “must never have a nuclear weapon.”
…
According to a review of member statements at their congressional websites and on social media, 28 House Democrats have issued messages saying explicitly that they “stand with Israel,” or some close variation thereof. Another 35 express unequivocal support for Israel without using the magic words “stand with Israel” precisely, but they leave no doubt as to the member’s support. And 16 others express “soft” support for Israel, without quite the same inflammatory language.
…
The “stand with Israel” caucus includes some usual suspects who have long backed up Israel’s actions, from Reps. Ted Lieu and Brad Sherman in California, to Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Lois Frankel in Florida, to Problem Solvers and New Democrats like Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Brad Schneider (D-IL). But freshman and swing-state members are also well represented—precisely the type of members who survive on large campaign donations from the likes of AIPAC.
…
AIPAC’s urgency may be due to a somewhat surprising amount of dissent among some congressional Democrats against Israel’s coordinated attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, military sites, and residential compounds, killing senior Iranian commanders and six nuclear scientists along with hundreds of civilians.
For example, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Israel’s “alarming decision to launch airstrikes on Iran” was “a reckless escalation that risks igniting regional violence.” Other military veterans like Reed, such as Reps. Seth Moulton (D-MA) and Jason Crow (D-CO), were similarly skeptical.
…
“The Constitution is very clear that no president can bomb another country or begin a war with the country without the permission of Congress,” Sen. Rand Paul (D-KY) insisted. My hope is that there won’t be any U.S. involvement.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) echoed this, arguing, “The president can’t undertake military action without a vote of Congress. Right now, I don’t see any circumstance in which direct U.S. military involvement would make us safer.”
Two pieces of legislation aim to quash U.S. involvement. One, introduced by independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, is titled the No War With Iran Act and has seven Democratic co-sponsors.
Sen. Tim Kaine’s War Powers Resolution seeks to reassert congressional authority over military engagements. In the House, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced on Monday that he would issue a War Powers Resolution, which quickly got support from 15 Democratic members.
I haven’t seen anything at all from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, nor from Representative Seth Magaziner. Senator Jack Reed made the statement highlighted above after the first Israeli strike, but also signed onto this joint statement along with several other high-ranking Senate Democrats:
“Intensifying military actions between Israel and Iran represent a dangerous escalation that risks igniting a broader regional war. Iran poses a risk to the United States and our allies and must not be allowed to attain a nuclear weapon. The United States stands firm in our support for the continued defense of Israel, our partner and ally. Our commitment to Israel remains ironclad and we urge the administration to defend Israel against the barrage of Iranian airstrikes, including through the provision of additional air defense capabilities. We urge President Trump to prioritize diplomacy and pursue a binding agreement that can prevent a nuclear-armed Iran and reduce the risk to our diplomats, our service members, and the hundreds of thousands of Americans living in the Middle East.
Representative Gabe Amo dished out a word salad of a tweet full of pandering buzzwords but devoid of any mention of Israel, the country that started the war and is trying to drag the United States into it:
I firmly believe in preventing a nuclear Iran.
We need President Trump to show leadership and pursue diplomacy in good faith. Too many lives are at risk.
To prevent an outbreak of a wider conflict and for the goal of lasting stability in the Middle East, I urge restraint and deescalation.
I will continue to monitor unfolding events and pray for the safety of everyone in the region.
I’ll continue to pray that AIPAC’s next check to Gabe Amo’s campaign bounces. To be honest, he might not even get one if they deem his tweets to not be explicitly pro-war (and thus pro-Israel) enough.
No member of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation has attached their name to any of the anti-war resolutions currently circulating the halls of Congress.
Rhode Island
1. RIIL erases policy language which explicitly protects trans youth athletes — then claims policy has not changed (Steve Alquist)
The Rhode Island Interscholastic League (RIIL) comprises 60 public, private, and parochial high schools, providing governance and leadership in the implementation of athletic programs and interscholastic competition.
On March 7, to “get ahead of …new policies coming from the federal government,” RIIL altered the wording of its policy regarding transgender, gender-diverse, and transitioning youth participating in sports.
Whereas previously, RIIL specifically stated that students had the right to participate in sports in alignment with their gender identity, that language has been removed in favor of language stating only that school principals determine student eligibility.
Steve Ahlquist attended, recorded, and reported on a recent RIIL meeting where members of the public voiced their concerns about the policy change to officials including Daniel Warner, the chairperson of the Principals’ Committee on Athletics (and the principal of Block Island School, the student body of which is quite unique and not exactly representative of other schools in Rhode Island).
RIIL made the language change despite clear guidance from the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) and the Rhode Island Attorney General’s office, which sent out a letter to schools one week earlier.
Warner noted RIIL is not a school — the type of weaselly gotcha that only a lawyer could love.
Warner also said RIIL was acting on the advice of legal counsel when it changed the language in the policy, and that despite the language being completely removed from the policy, resulting in a new policy with new language, the language change was not a policy change:
Syed Menebhi: Okay. At the March 24th meeting of the Principals Committee on Athletics, community members came together to send a message that the league should restore its old gender eligibility policy, which was supportive of trans youth. Today, in the middle of Pride month, we return to you with a message and a question. The message is that we’d like you to change the policy back. We remain committed to the position that RIIL should restore its former policy, which honored the dignity, worth, and belonging of all its student-athletes. When we last spoke, 500 people had signed our petition demanding that RIIL change back its former policy. Today, we have almost doubled that number to 975 signatures.
The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association has stood by its trans youth athletes. The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference has stayed strong in its commitment to the participation of all youth. There’s no reason that we should have less courage on this issue than our neighbors to the north and west. This Pride month, do the right thing and change the policy back…
Daniel Warner: As I tried to explain last time, how this committee works is that we represent the principals of Rhode Island and the student-athletes. If there’s a specific issue, and what I’m hearing from you is that your issue is that you want us to go back to the language that we used in the past.
Menebhi: Correct.
Warner: So, we follow the laws as they’re put out by the State of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Department of Education. Yes. So, the change we made did not change the intent of the law or the way that we deal with student-athletes.
Menebhi: Well, it did, because now principals decide, in their districts, their gender eligibility policies, when previously you had...
Warner: No, previously, the principals always dealt with eligibility issues.
Menebhi: Like grades and whatnot. I understand that.
Warner: No, all eligibility. All eligibility. For a child to participate in athletics in the State of Rhode Island, it’s the principal’s responsibility to ensure that they acknowledge the eligibility list that makes their students eligible to play. We don’t determine eligibility.
Menebhi: So maybe you can clarify for us then what was the policy change?
Warner: It was just a wording change.
Paul Pasaba: It’s not just a wording change. Previously, if a trans athlete wanted to participate and their principal was transphobic or not supportive, you guys had a stated commitment in your policy saying that all youth get to participate regardless of the gender listed on their records. You guys, in the past, had a stated commitment to that student to push back on the principal and say, “Hey, this student should be allowed to play.” Now you’ve removed any such commitment to that student. It is a policy change.
Warner: It’s not a policy change. And that commitment is still part of how we operate.
Pasaba: So, go back to the old language.
Menebhi: I guess we don’t understand the reason for the language change. If it’s the same policy.
Pasaba: Massachusetts maintains this language. Connecticut maintains this language.
2. AG Neronha reaffirms support for LGBTQ+ Rhode Islanders after Supreme Court upholds Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth (Steve Ahlquist)
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha issued a statement in response to a United States Supreme Court decision upholding a Tennessee law that bans medical treatment for transgender youth.
The Supreme Court justices’ 6-3 decision in USA vs. Skrmetti effectively provides legal protection to efforts by President Donald Trump’s Republican administration and many state governments to roll back federal protections for transgender people. An additional 26 states have laws similar to Tennessee’s regarding the use of puberty blockers or other hormone treatments for minors who identify as transgender.
For a complete discussion of the ruling by transgender journalist
, see: SCOTUS Allows For Trans Discrimination In Medical Care: A Full Analysis Of Today’s Ruling (recommended by ).
Book Recommendation
Covering Islam was written by Edward Said in 1981, but in terms of its thematic analysis, it could have been written yesterday. The book is divided into three chapters, with the second chapter devoted entirely to Iran. Despite the passage of more than three decades since its publication, the work remains sadly relevant today.
Edward Said wrote in his introduction to the book’s updated edition when it was republished in 1997:
...With some small degree of empathy it is not difficult to imagine that a Muslim might be made uncomfortable by the relentless insistence — even if it is put in terms of a debate — that her or his faith, culture, and people are seen as a source of threat, and that she or he has been deterministically associated with terrorism, violence, and "fundamentalism."
A steady stream of such characterizations is inflated still more by contributions from pro-Israeli journals and books, in the hopes that more Americans and Europeans will see Israel as a victim of Islamic violence. One Israeli government after another has resorted to the propagation of this self-image in the course of the information wars that have gone on since 1948 around the whole question of the Middle East. Although I have discussed this elsewhere, it is important to insist that such claims about Islam, and, most of the time, the Arabs, are designed to obscure what it is that Israel and the United States, as "Islam's" main opponents, have been doing.
Between them, the two countries have bombed and invaded several Islamic countries (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Iraq), they have (in Israel's case) occupied Arab-Islamic territory in four countries, and in the United States' case are seen in the United Nations as openly supporting the military occupation of these territories; to the overwhelming majority of Muslims and Arabs, Israel is therefore an arrogant regional nuclear power, contemptuous of its neighbors, heedless in the number and frequency of its bombings, killings (which far exceed the number of Israelis killed by Muslims), dispossessions, and dislocations, especially so far as the Palestinians are concerned.
Defying international law and dozens of United Nations resolutions, Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, has occupied South Lebanon since 1982, has had a policy of treating (and characterizing) Palestinians as sub-human —in effect a race apart — and has wielded its power over United States Middle Eastern policy whereby the interests of four million Israelis totally overshadow the interests of two hundred million Arab Muslims. It is all this, and not Bernard Lewis's quaint formulation that Muslims are enraged at Western "modernity," that has created an understandable sense of Arab-Islamic grievance against powers who, like Israel and the United States, proclaim they are liberal democracies but act against “lesser peoples” according to quite contradictory norms of self-interest and cruelty.
When the United States led a coalition of countries against Iraq in 1991, it spoke about the need to reverse aggression and occupation. Had Iraq not been a Muslim country that militarily occupied another such country in an area of huge oil reserves that are considered to be the United States' preserve, the invasion would not have taken place, just as Israel's invasion and occupation of the West Bank and Golan Heights, its annexation of East Jerusalem, and the implantation of settlements were not seen by the United States as requiring its intervention.
I mean, did he fucking nail it or what?
Said wrote this 28 years ago, and he passed away 22 years ago, but he literally could have written this yesterday. The only change needed is a quick update to the list of countries currently being bombed and invaded.
The late Edward Said (pronounced sigh-eed) is one of Palestine’s intellectual luminaries, and his scholarship, theory, and analysis have had a profound impact on writers, thinkers, and academics around the world. Said grew up between Jerusalem, Beirut and Cairo before his family was permanently displaced by the founding of the state of Israel by Jewish colonists in 1948. He went on to study at Princeton and teach at Columbia, and lived in New York for years before dying of leukemia in 2003.
Orientalism is Said’s most famous work, and his memoir Out of Place was actually the first book of his I read cover to cover, but I think Covering Islam should be required reading for every American journalist covering the “Middle East” in any capacity.
I read Covering Islam back in 2022 while I was living in Amman and writing quirky little cultural features for Jordan News, right before I moved back to Rhode Island to work for the Newport Daily News. Now is an excellent time to reread it, what with Israel bombing the hell out if Iran with the United States government’s enthusiastic backing as I type these very words.
If you click through and buy the book using my link or through my bookshop page on Bookshop.org (which I try to use in place of Amazon whenever possible because it supports independent bookstores), I get a little kickback.
