Election fraud is a Republican "Cervantes" attacking political windmills

Don Quixote chased mythical windmills and "tRumpzi Republicans" are living in the their own political delusion- Cervantes is revived!

Don Quixote saw delusional enemies in windmills 

Hello?  The 2020 election was not stolen and now Republicans are lying about the facts!

Opinion CNN echo: The Republican blueprint to steal the 2024, election by J. Michael Luttig:

J. Michael Luttig, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, formerly served on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for 15 years. He advised Vice President Mike Pence on January 6.

(CNN) Nearly a year and a half later, surprisingly few understand what January 6, was all about.

Fewer still understand why the former TFG President Donald Trump (#TFG) and (stupid) Republicans persist in their long-disproven claim that the 2020, presidential election was stolen. Much less why they are obsessed about making the 2024, race a referendum on the "stolen" election of 2020, which even they know was not stolen.

January 6th was never about a stolen election or even about actual voting fraud. It was always and only about an election that Trump lost fair and square, under legislatively promulgated election rules in a handful of swing states that he and other Republicans contend were unlawfully changed by state election officials and state courts to expand the right and opportunity to vote, largely in response to the COVID pandemic.

Incredulously, the Republicans' mystifying claim to this day that Trump did, or would have, received more votes than Joe Biden in 2020, were it not for actual voting fraud, is but the shiny object that Republicans have tauntingly and disingenuously dangled before the American public for almost a year and a half now to distract attention from their far more ambitious objective.


That objective is not somehow to rescind the 2020, election, as they would have us believe. That's constitutionally impossible. Trump's and the Republicans' far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024, the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020, and to overturn the 2024, election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest.

The last presidential election was a dry run for the next.

From long before Election Day 2020, Trump and Republicans planned to overturn the presidential election by exploiting the Electors and Elections Clauses of the Constitution, the Electoral College, the Electoral Count Act of 1877, and the 12th Amendment, if Trump lost the popular and Electoral College vote.

The cornerstone of the plan was to have the Supreme Court embrace the little known "independent state legislature" doctrine, which, in turn, would pave the way for exploitation of the Electoral College process and the Electoral Count Act, and finally for Vice President Mike Pence to reject enough swing state electoral votes to overturn the election using Pence's ceremonial power under the 12th Amendment and award the presidency to Donald Trump.

The independent state legislature doctrine says that, under the Elections and the Electors Clauses of the Constitution, state legislatures possess plenary and exclusive power over the conduct of federal presidential elections and the selection of state presidential electors. Not even a state supreme court, let alone other state elections officials, can alter the legislatively written election rules or interfere with the appointment of state electors by the legislatures, under this theory.

Trump and the Republicans began executing this first stage of their plan months before November 3, by challenging as violative of the independent state legislature doctrine election rules relating to early- and late-voting, extensions of voting days and times, mail-in ballots, and other election law changes that Republicans contended had been unlawfully altered by state officials and state courts in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan.

These cases eventually wound their way to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2020, and by December, the Supreme Court had decided all of these cases, but only by orders, either disallowing federal court intervention to change an election rule that had been promulgated by a state legislature, allowing legislatively promulgated rules to be changed by state officials and state courts, or deadlocking 4-4, because Justice Barrett was not sworn in until after those cases were briefed and ready for decision by the Court. In none of these cases did the Supreme Court decide the all-important independent state legislature doctrine.

Thwarted by the Supreme Court's indecision on that doctrine, Trump and the Republicans turned their efforts to the second stage of their plan, exploitation of the Electoral College and the Electoral Count Act.

The Electoral College is the process by which Americans choose their presidents, a process that can lead to the election as president of a candidate who does not receive a majority of votes cast by the American voters. Republicans have grown increasingly wary of the Electoral College with the new census and political demographics of the nation's shifting population.

In fact, the Supreme Court never decided whether to embrace the independent state legislature doctrine. But then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in separate concurring opinions said they would embrace that doctrine in Bush v. Gore, 20 years earlier, and Republicans had every reason to believe there were at least five votes on the Supreme Court for the doctrine in November 2020, with Amy Coney Barrett having just been confirmed in the eleventh hour before the election.

#TFG - Trump and the Republicans began executing this first stage of their plan months before November 3, by challenging as violative of the independent state legislature doctrine election rules relating to early- and late-voting, extensions of voting days and times, mail-in ballots, and other election law changes that Republicans contended had been unlawfully altered by state officials and state courts in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan.

These cases eventually wound their way to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2020, and by December, the Supreme Court had decided all of these cases, but only by orders, either disallowing federal court intervention to change an election rule that had been promulgated by a state legislature, allowing legislatively promulgated rules to be changed by state officials and state courts, or deadlocking 4-4, because Justice Barrett was not sworn in until after those cases were briefed and ready for decision by the Court. In none of these cases did the Supreme Court decide the all-important independent state legislature doctrine.

Thwarted by the Supreme Court's indecision on that doctrine, Trump and the Republicans turned their efforts to the second stage of their plan, exploitation of the Electoral College and the Electoral Count Act.

The Electoral College is the process by which Americans choose their presidents, a process that can lead to the election as president of a candidate who does not receive a majority of votes cast by the American voters. Republicans have grown increasingly wary of the Electoral College with the new census and political demographics of the nation's shifting population.

The Electoral Count Act empowers Congress to decide the presidency in a host of circumstances where Congress determines that state electoral votes were not "regularly given" by electors who were "lawfully certified," terms that are undefined and ambiguous. 

In this second stage of the plan, the Republicans needed to generate state-certified alternative slates of electors from swing states where Biden won the popular vote who would cast their electoral votes for Trump instead. Congress would then count the votes of these alternative electoral slates on January 6, rather than the votes of the certified electoral slates for Biden, and Trump would be declared the reelected president.

The Republicans' plan failed at this stage when they were unable to secure a single legitimate, alternative slate of electors from any state because the various state officials refused to officially certify these Trump-urged slates.

Thwarted by the Supreme Court in the first stage, foiled by their inability to come up with alternative state electoral slates in the second stage, and with time running out, Trump and the Republicans began executing the final option in their plan, which was to scare up illegitimate alternative electoral slates in various swing states to be transmitted to Congress. 

Whereupon, on January 6, Vice President Pence would count only the votes of the illegitimate electors from the swing states, and not the votes of the legitimate, certified electors that were cast for Biden, and declare Donald Trump's reelection as President of the United States.

The entire house of cards collapsed at noon on January 6, when Pence refused to go along with the ill-conceived plan, correctly concluding that under the 12th Amendment he had no power to reject the votes that had been cast by the duly certified electors or to delay the count to give Republicans even more time to whip up alternative electoral slates.

Pence declared Joe Biden the 46th President of the United States at 3:40 a.m. on Thursday, January 7, roughly 14 hours after rioters stormed the US Capitol, disrupting the Joint Session and preventing Congress from counting the Electoral College votes for president until late that night and into the following day, after the statutorily designated day for counting those votes.

Trump and his allies and supporters in Congress and the states began readying their failed 2020 plan to overturn the 2024 presidential election later that very same day and they have been unabashedly readying that plan ever since, in plain view to the American public. Today, they are already a long way toward recapturing the White House in 2024, whether Trump or another Republican candidate wins the election or not.

Trump and Republicans are preparing to return to the Supreme Court, where this time they will likely win the independent state legislature doctrine, now that Amy Coney Barrett is on the Court and ready to vote. Barrett has not addressed the issue, but this turns on an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, and Barrett is firmly aligned on that method of constitutional interpretation with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, all three of whom have written that they believe the doctrine is correct.

Only last month, in a case from North Carolina the Court declined to hear, Moore v. Harper, four Justices (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) said that the independent state legislature question is of exceptional importance to our national elections, the issue will continue to recur and the Court should decide the issue sooner rather than later before the next presidential election. This case involved congressional redistricting, but the independent state legislature doctrine is as applicable to redistricting as it is to presidential elections.

Moreover, the Republicans are also in the throes of electing Trump-endorsed candidates to state legislative offices in key swing states, installing into office their favored state election officials who deny that Biden won the 2020 election, such as secretaries of state, electing sympathetic state court judges onto the state benches and grooming their preferred potential electors for ultimate selection by the party, all so they will be positioned to generate and transmit alternative electoral slates to Congress, if need be.

Finally, they are furiously politicking to elect Trump supporters to the Senate and House, so they can overturn the election in Congress, as a last resort.

Forewarned is to be forearmed.

Trump and the Republicans can only be stopped from stealing the 2024 election at this point if the Supreme Court rejects the independent state legislature doctrine (thus allowing state court enforcement of state constitutional limitations on legislatively enacted election rules and elector appointments) and Congress amends the Electoral Count Act to constrain Congress' own power to reject state electoral votes and decide the presidency.

Although the Vice President will be a Democrat in 2024, both parties also need to enact federal legislation that expressly limits the vice president's power to be coextensive with the power accorded the vice president in the 12th Amendment and confirm that it is largely ceremonial, as Pence construed it to be on January 6th.

Vice President Kamala Harris would preside over the Joint Session in 2024. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have any idea who will be presiding after that, however. Thus, both parties have the incentive to clarify the vice president's ceremonial role now.

As it stands today, Trump, or his anointed successor, and the Republicans are poised, in their word, to "steal" from Democrats the presidential election in 2024, that they falsely claim the Democrats stole from them in 2020. But there is a difference between the falsely claimed "stolen" election of 2020, and what would be the stolen election of 2024. Unlike the Democrats' theft claimed by Republicans, the Republicans' theft would be in open defiance of the popular vote and thus the will of the American people: poetic, though tragic, irony for America's democracy.

Echo opinion: What makes vandals target the desecration of cemeteries?

There is a rising incidences of cemetery desecration and antisemitism in recent years, especially during the previous president's #TFG's one term and even today, as reported in a previous blog (link here).

So, I decided to learn more about why is it that certain people choose to vandalize headstones in cemeteries? Of course, Psychology Today published an interesting article written by Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D.

Expert echo essay by Dr. Garfinkel:

Cemeteries are attractive to juvenile vandals, as they are easy targets with minimal security. Adolescents—usually male, but also female—find the darkness and quiet comfortable locations for underage drinking and other illegal activities. The vandalism that follows is part of the antisocial package—with the added psychological edge of fear of death, defiance of death, "triumph" over death.

The vandals that fit this profile are opportunistic in their choice of location, the cemetery.

But the U.S. and Europe have recently seen a rise in another kind of cemetery attack. Not vandalism, but hate crimes. Not opportunistic, but selective. Not psychologically motivated, but politically meaningful.

Hundreds of gravestones in Jewish cemeteries around the country have been destroyed and overturned in an expression of anti-Semitism that has significant historical roots. 

Jews consider the land in which they bury their dead to be sacred ground, and cemetery destruction is a deeply felt defilement. It is heartbreaking for a family member to see a tombstone violated.

Donna Warwick’s great-grandparents’ graves were attacked in the St. Louis cemetery. Warwick posted an open letter to the cemetery attackers on Facebook, letting them know that their victims had been real people, with lives of dignity and struggle, who were proud of their children and grandchildren and believed in service to the community. She writes:

My great-grandparents gave to all kinds of charities and offered many people in St. Louis (Missouri) a chance for better lives. They may have even donated to a cause that helped someone in your family. You may never come to know it, but they could have donated to a hospital that offered your mother care or have given to a food pantry that fed your sister or to a scholarship fund that educated your brother.

With remarkable open-heartedness, Warwick honors her great grandparents’ memory by extending her hand to the “vandals.”

So, I want you to know something. Whenever you do find it in your heart to feel the regret, I will wholeheartedly forgive you. For I know that is what my grandmother would want me to do. So, please come forward and I will help you bury your hate and lead a life that would better honor your own parents, your own grandparents and your own great grandparents who may have struggled and worked hard to try to make a better life for you too.

Vandalizing a loved one’s grave injures the family, and far beyond. Attack on a cemetery is an attack on memory and community that resonates with humanity’s ugly history of ethnic and religious hatred.

Attacks against Jewish cemeteries carry the message “you don’t belong here,” and the threat “we are wiping out your memory, and therefore your existence.”

Cemetery attacks express contempt and symbolic uprooting of past—and therefore future—presence. The Jordanians understood this back in 1948, so when Jordan attacked and occupied parts of Jerusalem, it desecrated the 2,500-year-old Jewish graveyard on the Mt. of Olives. Tens of thousands of tombstones were broken into pieces to be used as building materials. Synagogues and other institutions were destroyed as well.

Cemetery desecration was part of the infamous Kristallnacht* in Germany, the initial step in the program of Nazi genocide against the Jews of Europe.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Although human beings continue to experience their darkest impulses, history need not repeat itself. These criminals can be caught, and the law enforced, when hatred is condemned at the highest levels. America cannot tolerate any hate crimes, including anti-Semitism.


Vice-President Pence sent that message by participating in the cleanup of the St. Louis Jewish cemetery. ("There is no place in America for hatred or acts of prejudice or violence or anti-Semitism," Pence said while visiting the Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, Missouri.  Tragically, about 180 headstones were knocked off their bases at the Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery.)

In fact, law enforcement needs to follow.

Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D., is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, Middle East television commentator.

* On the night of November 9, 1938, violent anti-Jewish demonstrations broke out across Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Nazi officials depicted the riots as justified reactions to the assassination of German foreign official Ernst vom Rath, who had been shot two days earlier by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year old Polish Jew distraught over the deportation of his family from Germany.

Over the next 48 hours, violent mobs, spurred by antisemitic exhortations from Nazi officials, destroyed hundreds of synagogues, burning or desecrating Jewish religious artifacts along the way. Acting on orders from Gestapo headquarters, police officers and firefighters did nothing to prevent the destruction.

Evil vandals desecrate Jewish cemeteries

Philadelphia Jewish cemetery desecrated by vandals- 100 headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia were knocked over.

A Jewish cemetery desecration in France with evil swastikas.

Holocaust ghosts continue:

Antisemitic incidents reach record high in the U.S., Maryland: Report: From the evil vandalism of graves to threatening emails and hate-filled fliers, last year saw incidents of antisemitism jump in Maryland and nationwide.

MARYLAND — Antisemitic incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism, including 55 in Maryland, reached an all-time high in 2021, according to an Anti-Defamation League report released Tuesday.

The ADL's annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents describes 2,717 attacks on Jewish people last year, a 34 percent year-over-year increase, according to the ADL, which began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979.

That amounts to an increase of more than seven antisemitic incidents a day.

In Maryland, the ADL noted 60 antisemitic incidents in 2021 and the first three months of 22. A year earlier, 47 such incidents were recorded.

In July 2021, vandals struck a Jewish cemetery in Baltimore. Thirteen vandalized graves were discovered on Sunday at the German Hill Road Jewish Cemetery in Graceland Park. The antisemitic vandalism, including swastikas, was washed away by members of the Jewish Cemeteries Association of Greater Baltimore.

Howard Libit, the executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council, told WBAL the Jewish community has seen a spike in antisemitic cases. "Over the last two years, the Association of the Baltimore Jewish Council actually had a task force on antisemitism," Libit said. "We've seen this surge of antisemitic incidents in our state, in our country, in our community."

Some of the antisemitic actions reported to the ADL were:

Harford County: In February 2021, leaders of the Hartford County Young Republicans emailed antisemitic content to their listserv, leading the Maryland Young Republicans to dissolve the chapter.

The party then formed a new chapter, naming Anna Dove and Lindsey Reynolds as acting co-chairs. In video posted on Facebook, Dove, who serves as chief of staff for Del. Michael J. Griffith (R-35B), condemned the email as "incredibly disturbing, anti-Semitic, racist content. … It is despicable that the leadership of the Harford County Young Republicans allowed such a disgusting email to circulate, espousing ideas that the members of its club do not ascribe to," Baltimore Jewish Living reported.

The Maryland Young Republicans said in a statement that the antisemitic email violated the group's bylaws, which prohibit any type of discrimination based on race, color, sex, national origin, or religious belief. "More importantly, such rhetoric and hatefulness have no place in our organization, and their actions are not reflective of our Republican values," the group said.

Bowie: On. Feb. 19 and 24, 2002, people associated with the antisemitic Goyim Defense League, including known white supremacists, distributed propaganda that read "Black Lives Matter" on the front and "Every aspect of the slave trade is Jewish", on the back. The second weekend the flier said, "Every single aspect of the COVID agenda is Jewish." (OMG- evil evil evil!)

Dunkirk: On Jan. 2, 2022, the Loyal White Knights, a Klan group, distributed material in a residential area that read: "Dr. King's 'Dream' has come true! Blacks and whites are miscegenating, destroying both races! The communist jews are enjoying it immensely!"

Columbia: In December, authorities said "Heil Hitler" and a swastika were drawn in a school bathroom.

Baltimore: In November, during Hanukah, a rock was thrown through the window of a home displaying a menorah.

Pikesville: In June, a Jewish school received a threatening antisemitic phone call in which the caller said, "The rabbis are responsible for the massacre in Hebron and need their throats slit."

Clarksburg: In April 2021, a Jewish cemetery streamed a funeral over Zoom, which was disrupted by unknown participants who wrote hateful messages and drew swastikas on the screen.

Antisemitic incidents "reached a high watermark across virtually every category" in the audit, the ADL said, including at:
Jewish institutions such as synagogues and community centers, up 61 percent.
K-12 schools, up 106 percent.
College campuses, up 21 percent.

Physical assaults increased 167 percent, incidents of harassment increased 43 percent, and acts of antisemitic violence rose 14 percent, according to the audit.

The ADL reported a surge in violence during the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas. Antisemitic incidents, including violent attacks on Jewish people, increased 148 percent from the previous May as hundreds of anti-Israel protests took place in dozens of U.S. cities on May 10, the date marking the official start of military action.

"While we have always seen a rise in antisemitic activity during periods of increased hostilities between Israel and terrorist groups, the violence we witnessed in America during the conflict last May was shocking," ADL chief executive and national director Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a news release.

"Jews were being attacked in the streets for no other reason than the fact that they were Jewish, and it seemed as if the working assumption was that if you were Jewish, you were blameworthy for what was happening half a world away."

Anti-Israel protests accounted for only a portion of the violent attacks on Jews in 2021, and not the largest portion, according to the ADL. Physical assaults also spiked in November and December, when there were no contributing geopolitical events.

Nearly 18 percent of the incidents last year — at least 484 — were attributable to actions by domestic extremists, the ADL said.

"When it comes to antisemitic activity in America, you cannot point to any single ideology or belief system, and in many cases, we simply don't know the motivation," Greenblatt said in the release. "But we do know that Jews are experiencing more antisemitic incidents than we have in this country in at least 40 years, and that's a deeply troubling indicator of larger societal fissures."


2021 Findings: By The Numbers

Total antisemitic incidents: 2,717, up 34 percent

Assaults: 88, up 167 percent

Victims: 131
Use of deadly weapons: 11
Fatalities: 0
Harassment: 1,776 incidents, up 43 percent
Vandalism: 853 incidents, up 14 percent
Swastikas used in 578 incidents

States reporting incidents: 50 and the District of Columbia, with the following states accounting for 58 percent of total incidents:

New York: 416
New Jersey: 370
California: 367
Florida: 190
Michigan: 112
Texas: 112

Antisemitic incidents at Jewish Institutions: 525 

Harassment: 413 

Vandalism: 101

Assaults: 11

About 25 percent, or 111 incidents, were linked to anti-Zionist or anti-Israel sentiments. Domestic extremist groups or individuals inspired by extremist ideology were responsible for 484, antisemitic incidents, 18 percent of the total, the ADL said.

White supremacist groups and extremists are responsible for 422 antisemitic propaganda distributions, a 52 percent increase from the year before.

A total of 345 antisemitic incidents in 2021, involved references to Israel or Zionism; of them, 68 appeared in the form of white supremacist propaganda efforts, which the ADL said attempt to strengthen anti-Israel and antisemitic beliefs.

Recognizing global ways to prevent genocide

Genocide Awareness and Prevention! A message from the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center in Portland, Maine.

The Kigali Genocide Memorial commemorates the 1994, Rwandan genocide. The remains of over 250,000 people are interred there. There is a visitor center for students and those wishing to understand the events leading up to the genocide of 1994.

"April is the cruelest month..." begins the first line of T.S. Eliot’s poem, "The Waste Land." Many believe the poem’s themes of memory, contrast, and post-war despair offer a chaotic view of the world. One wonders if the poet had the current time in mind when penning the poem. At a personal level, living as an immigrant through cold, long Maine winters, waiting for the warm spring weather can be merciless. 

April is the month of Genocide Awareness and Prevention. Every April, we remember days of remembrance for the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide and Armenian and those in Bosnia, Cambodia, Darfur and against the Kurds of Iraq. These days, the ongoing violence and atrocities in Ukraine remind us of why remembering past genocides and committing to prevent them in the future is so critical. And we are yet to recognize genocides against the native peoples of North America.

Reza Jalali 

The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Rwandan Genocide, which is also called Kwibuka, was observed by the local Rwandan community in a well-attended event at the University of Southern Maine. The Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center participated in the event, to stand in solidarity with our Rwandan neighbors. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, stated that the genocide in Rwanda was neither an accident, nor unavoidable. “As we remember the bloodshed 28 years ago, we must recognize that we always have a choice: To choose humanity over hatred, compassion over cruelty, courage over complacency,” said Guterres.

A month earlier, we at GPIWC assisted two Ukrainians to seeking protection. Our efforts to bring attention to the plight of the world’s victims of genocides and the innocents displaced by wars, persecution, and climate change continue by publishing a Op-Ed on the war in Ukraine, tabling at the Khmer New Year in Buxton, attending the Rwandan Day of Remembrance, and supporting our Muslim neighbors during the Holy Month of Ramadan by publishing and distributing the Ramadan timetable.

We have been busy at GPIWC; the new food initiative, supported by Good Shepherd Food Bank and other partners, is nearing implementation. Our iEnglish team, in partnership with the nonprofit In Her Presence and South Portland Adult Ed, is providing four new in-person classes for the asylum seekers staying in hotels in Portland and South Portland. Applications for our zero-interest microloan program are being received and processed. Plans to bring free family-friendly and culturally appropriate concerts and performances, New Mainers on Stage, are moving rapidly forward. New staff members have been hired. We are grateful that new members volunteered to join our Board of Directors and bring their expertise to help carry our mission. Foundations and the business community continue to support us financially. Their generosity and that of individual donors make us feel proud of our city and state. April or not, the community continues to shower us with the kind of kindness and generosity that our state is known for. Onward we march, for we believe we are stronger when we work together.

Reza Jalali GPIWC Executive Director

Xenophobia and Cherry Trees

An echo report published by NBC News, written by Angela Yang

Burned and vandalized: A history of cherry blossoms bearing the brunt of xenophobia*: From December 8, 1941's attack on Pearl Harbor to the COVID-19 scapegoating, Japanese cherry blossom trees have a history of being destroyed during times of heightened anti-Asian sentiment.

George Takei captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father’s—and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In a stunning graphic memoir, Takei revisits his haunting childhood in American concentration camps, as one of over 100,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon—and America itself—in this gripping (graphic) tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.

WASHINGTON, DC- In early spring every year, a sea of bright pink flowers frames outdoor spaces from the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle to the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., as thousands of cherry trees reach full bloom. The trees, which are nonnative to North America, now blossom across the country after the U.S. first imported them from Japan more than a century ago.

People visit the cherry blossoms as they bloom at the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., on March 24. Saul Loeb / AFP

In fact, the trees symbolize a history of friendship between Japan and the United States. They also have a variety of meanings — including life, death and renewal — for the Japanese diaspora. Yet, at times when fear and prejudice flare up in the U.S., they have also been targets of violence against Japanese Americans or Asians at large.

After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 1941, vandals cut down four of the cherry trees around Washington’s Tidal Basin, inscribing “To Hell With the Japanese” on one of the severed trunks. Cherry blossoms have been an iconic sight in the capital since Tokyo gave them to the U.S. in the early 20th century.

Since 1912, Washington has regularly hosted an annual National Cherry Blossom Festival, which draws more than 1.5 million people every year to celebrate the friendship between the two countries. The festival ceased throughout much of World War II as anti-Japan sentiment spiked, according to the National Park Service, and people insisted on renaming the trees “Oriental” cherry trees.

As Asian Americans confront another wave of xenophobia brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and tense U.S. relations with China, a Japanese cultural center in San Francisco’s Japantown — the largest and longest-standing Japanese American community in the country — has felt the scapegoating continue.

Three cherry trees were vandalized outside the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California at the start of 2021. After an outpouring of support from donors, the center planted four cherry blossom trees this year and hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony Saturday to dedicate the fourth tree to the donors.

When the center found the trees last year, every branch had been ripped off to leave only the trunks. Law enforcement agencies did not label the incident a hate crime, but one thing was clear to Paul Osaki, the cultural center’s director: This was more than breaking a few branches —it was an act meant to destroy the trees.

“It really felt like an attack against our cultural heritage. And so that hurt,” Osaki said. “I’d almost prefer them to attack me versus those trees. They were very special and meant a lot more than just a tree growing up in the sidewalk.”

The cherry blossoms, which were planted nearly 30 years ago to commemorate a visit from the emperor and empress of Japan, were the first to have been planted in more than half a century. The city uprooted every tree in Japantown from the 1960s to the 1980s during a redevelopment initiative targeted at areas of “urban blight” — defined partly as neighborhoods with major influxes of non-European populations — the San Francisco Planning Department said in a report.

Osaki said residents first got notice in 1948 about the urban renewal project, which planned to raze and reconstruct much of Japantown at a time when Japanese Americans were still a “very hated community” as a result of World War II.

Families in the area, many of whom had just begun returning from prison camps a couple of years previously, were given a deadline to sell their homes or be evicted.

The cherry blossom trees that were removed during the period included those planted by the earliest generation to settle down in the part of San Francisco that became home to the country’s first Japantown, Osaki said.

When the U.S. first received the blossoms from Japan, officials rejected them. About two years before the blossoms were planted, Japan had given Washington an initial gift of 2,000 cherry trees. But when they arrived in 1910, the Agriculture Department discovered upon inspection that they were diseased and infested with insects, according to the National Park Service. The trees were burned.

Some anthropologists, including Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, are skeptical about whether the trees were, indeed, infested. An editorial published in response by The New York Times also said: “We have been importing ornamental plants from Japan for years, and by the shipload, and it is remarkable that this particular invoice should have contained any new infections.”

After the turn of the century, Ohnuki-Tierney said, U.S. isolationists found themselves gradually beginning a tug-of-war with policymakers who were open to greater internationalism.

Nativist Charles Marlatt headed the Agriculture Department’s Bureau of Entomology, which inspected imported plants.

Marlatt, who held strong concerns about pests from nonnative plants, had campaigned unsuccessfully for plant quarantine legislation. Entomology experts have suggested that his honeymoon trip to China and Japan, during which his wife contracted an unknown illness that later caused her death, influenced his concerns.

“The plants from Japan and China, on one hand, people tried to welcome them. On the other hand, the isolationists started to object to them,” Ohnuki-Tierney said. “And it is very interesting the way anti-Asian racism very, very easily comes up in the United States.”

So when Japanese officials prepared a second shipment, they enlisted multiple quarantine and horticultural experts to supervise the cherry trees’ cultivation before they reassured the Agriculture Department that preventive measures had been taken to eliminate the possibility of pests. Park Service records show that that batch of trees was accepted and planted along the Potomac River in 1912.

Since the end of World War II, the Park Service has recorded no further acts of vandalism to cherry trees in the capital — although the concern has resurfaced in light of increased violence against Asian communities in recent years, said Ryan Shaffer, the president of Japan-America Society of Washington.

Shaffer, who is on the board of the Cherry Blossom Festival, oversees the Sakura Matsuri Japanese Street Festival, the largest annual celebration of Japanese culture in the U.S. Both events had been disrupted for the past two years, and Shaffer said it was “incredibly heartening” to see this year’s full-fledged festivals attract even larger turnouts than those of 2019.

“Many of us in the national capital region and around the country could easily forget that the cherry trees were connected to Japan at all, because they’ve become such an iconic and treasured piece of the cultural legacy of our area,” he said. “That’s why it’s important for everybody to come out and show their love for the cherry trees and Japan’s gift to the United States every spring.”

*xenophobia- dislike or prejudice against people from other countries.

Teaching the Holocaust is essential to protect future generations

Don’t suppress Holocaust lessons

Opinion echo letter published in The Daily Gazette Schenectady, NY:

Several months ago, the South-lake, Texas school district advised their teachers that if they study a book about the Holocaust, they should also offer students a book from an “opposing” perspective.

What was striking to me is that there is no “opposing” perspective to the Holocaust or to the cruelty and barbarism that destroyed so many Jews; killed only because they were Jews.

A Tennessee school board voted to remove a novel about the Holocaust, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman, from the eighth-grade curriculum because it concerns themes and language they deemed offensive.

This announcement was made just a few days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU FORMER GERMAN NAZI
CONCENTRATION AND EXTERMINATION CAMP

Is this something we should all be concerned about?

I believe it is.

Altering the facts, sweetening the words, banning the books, does not protect the student.

Quite the opposite.

Preventing atrocities from reoccurring and seeking hope for the future is through education by trained teachers who know how to bring to their students the historical facts while respecting their intelligence and ability to separate right from universal wrong.

Our responsibility to fix the world means that we must honestly first know how it is broken, then repair is possible.

The planned Capital District Jewish Holocaust Memorial to be constructed in Niskayuna (New York) is vital because it will be a landmark, a beacon of education that speaks for all against hate, prejudice and bigotry.

Michael Lozman
Menands, New York
The writer is president, Capital District Jewish Holocaust Memorial.

Lies told by dumb and dumber- Perdue and TFG

"Senator Lindsey Graham has advice, and a warning, for #TFG Donald Trump: Focus on the future and making peoples’ lives better, and drop the constant 2020 election claims. But the former president doesn’t appear to be listening," quote published in Roll Call.

Nevertheless, this opinion echo by Eugene Robinson, describes the current regressive political situation, in The Washington Post:

Maine Writer opinion:  "David Perdue is dumb and dumber!"

Perdue and Trump bookends "dumb and dumber".

How did David Perdue become so dumb? In fact, Perdue's father, a Democrat, was the elected superintendent of schools for Houston County, Georgia, from 1961 to 1980, where he oversaw the desegregation of the school system.

“First off, folks, let me be very clear tonight. The election in 2020 was rigged and stolen.”

That bald faced lie was former senator David Perdue’s opening line Sunday in a primary debate against the fellow Republican whose job he is trying to take, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. The shocking thing about this falsehood is that nobody should be particularly shocked. It would have been more surprising if Perdue had told the truth.
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The GOP has made clear that it intends to run a “post-truth” campaign in the November elections. No Republican who goes along with this abominable strategy — no Republican who doesn’t publicly denounce it — deserves your vote. Not a single one of them.

It is no exaggeration to say that what the onetime Party of Lincoln is doing constitutes a dire threat to the very idea of democracy. A contest between liberal and conservative philosophies is healthy. An asymmetrical clash between one party grappling with nuanced reality and another party deliberately spewing paranoid fiction is dangerously corrosive to the fabric of the nation.

If the warp of our differences is no longer held together by the weft of an agreed-upon chronicle of events and a bipartisan encyclopedia of facts, there is no basis for meaningful political discourse. We can only speak past, not to, one another.

It must be acknowledged, because it is the simple truth, that this is not a “both-sides-are-to-blame” crisis. The Democratic Party is engaged in politics as usual, with the customary pull and tug between its progressive and centrist wings. The GOP has gone rogue in a way that is un-American and without modern precedent.

Republicans tolerated TFG Donald Trump’s litany of lies, for years. But this tendency to excuse mendacity shifted from bad habit to mortal sin with the party’s embrace of that “big lie” about the election Trump lost to Joe Biden. Perdue was especially brazen in the way he trumpeted the proven falsehood. But no less guilty are the many other Republicans who perpetuate it by mumbling about “irregularities” in the 2020 vote — or by remaining silent. Their complicity in the lie is not excused by the fact that Trump will try his best to end their careers if they dare speak the truth. They know the difference between right and wrong, and they are opting for personal gain over public service. They should be ashamed of themselves.

TFG: Adolf Hitler reincarnated!

The stolen-election lie is just the beginning, though. It establishes a post-truth ethos in which other lies become not just acceptable but also routine. Last week, for example, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) flatly denied a New York Times report that he had told GOP colleagues, in a phone call after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, that he planned to advise Trump to resign. Those who were on that call knew he was lying. None came forward publicly to say so.

When the Times and MSNBC released a tape recording of the Jan. 10, 2021, call — in which McCarthy says he will tell Trump, “It would be my recommendation you should resign” — the only public GOP criticism of McCarthy came from Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who has already broken with the leadership and serves on the House Jan. 6 committee, and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who accused McCarthy of insufficient fealty to Trump. 

Most mainstream Republican members of Congress said nothing at all.

Democrats, understandably, were less constrained. “Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Sunday. “This is outrageous. And that is really the illness that pervades the Republican leadership right now — that they say one thing to the American public and something else in private.”

Warren did not exaggerate. The whole GOP campaign for the fall elections promises to be built on lies — about critical race theory, about gay and transgender people, about purported attempts to “cancel” conservative voices. I know from private conversations that there are prominent Republicans who are deeply concerned about what their party is doing — but say nothing publicly. The party’s aim is to regain power, and truth is mere collateral damage.

The Democratic Party can be messy, disorganized, clumsy, starry-eyed and overly wonkish, prone to showing up at a political knife fight with a sheaf of briefing books. However, right now, the Democrats are the nation’s only hope for getting our democracy back on the rails. My personal views are obviously on the progressive side, but I believe journalists must stand, above all else, for truth, no matter where on the political spectrum it comes from. The Republican Party no longer acts as if truth matters.

And this state of affairs can’t be blamed entirely on Trump. Republican elected officials have a choice and are (horribly and unethically!) choosing to lie. 

Voters must choose to send the liars home.

Ukrainian resistance needs guns: Give them more!

Ukraine is fighting for all of Europe. Some are reluctant to call this  "World War III", but I cannot imagine calling the invasion of Ukraine anything else. Remember, the Russians invaded Crimea - a Ukrainian region, in 2014, and nothing was done to stop Putin's aggression.

Echo opinion published in Aljazeera by Emir Suljagic

Dear brothers and sisters in Mariupol,

I spent three and a half years of my life where you are now – completely encircled by enemy troops bent on my people’s wholesale destruction. I am familiar with the anguish, frustration, fear, and desperation that you must be feeling. But let me give you the good news first: You will prevail. There is no doubt in my mind that Russian troops will never conquer Mariupol.

Pray for Ukraine Iron On Patch, Glory To Ukraine Patch, I stand with Ukraine patch.

For one thing, they do not have the manpower to do so. It takes a lot more troops to occupy and control a city of more than 400,000. The Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina laid siege to our capital of Sarajevo and shelled it for three and a half years, without ever managing to enter. The Russian armed forces do not have the fighting spirit and are nowhere near the determination of the defenders of Mariupol.

I am no military professional or military historian, but I maintain that the Ukrainian military is the best fighting organization in the world at this time. The Russian military is simply not willing or capable of paying the price to occupy your city.

Let me also give you the bad news: Sadly, you will pay for your freedom with your lives and the lives of your loved ones – your brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers. With every step, you will lose those you could not imagine your lives without. This is not just a war between Russian invaders and Ukrainian defenders. This is an attempt at politicide. The Russian goal is not just to conquer Ukraine, but to wipe Ukraine, as a state, off the map, relegating your history, culture, and people to a footnote in the history books to be written by the future likes of Ivan Ilyin and Aleksandr Dugin.

Now, let me tell you about what comes after. For you, it is never going to be over. This war has already hijacked your lives and the best you can do is embrace the fate that has been thrust upon you. History has been unusually cruel to you. In this war, you are fighting not only for yourselves but for future generations that are yet to be born. It is a crushing burden that you have not asked to bear. To make matters worse, you are also fighting this war on behalf of an ungrateful continent that cares more about warming up its homes with Russian gas than saving your children from bombs and starvation.

Whatever you do, there is one notion you should never entertain: laying down your arms. As we learned from the Serbs in Bosnia, the Russians can only exterminate you – and they certainly will – if you are unarmed. Allowing yourselves to be disarmed is the quickest way to a mass grave.

Indeed, historically, the Russian military is no stranger to this precept – recall for instance the Katyn forest massacre of 1940. Your own history is also full of examples of Russian brutality. The alternative to fighting off the present Russian invasion is something akin to Holodomor. You are paying with thousands of lives to avoid losing millions.

I know this is difficult to remember as Russian artillery is raining down upon you. I know it is of little to no consolation to the many thousands of children displaced in Ukraine or in refugee camps who will grow up without their parents. Having lost my own father to the ravages of war, I know exactly the gaping hole in the heart that this loss results in. However, I must say that I have only come to fully appreciate my own father’s sacrifice after witnessing the tremendous bravery of Ukraine’s people. I hope that this holds for you at least some meaning and tells you of the enormous inspiration that your courageous fight has been to the entire world.

There are many parallels to be drawn between our war for Bosnia and your war for Ukraine. In the 1990s, we too were fighting against a larger neighbor, ruled by a deranged autocrat who sought to rob us of our lives, freedom and identity as a distinct and sovereign people. However, the dissolution of Yugoslavia was of far less consequence beyond the region than the fight for Ukraine. The fate of the world is literally being decided on the Ukrainian chernozem (

A destroyed Russian military vehicle lies in front of an Orthodox church in the Ukrainian village of Lypivka on April 11. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)

Ukrainian black soil: Chernozems form 67.7% of agricultural terrain in Ukraine – 67.7% and have almost completely been converted into arable lands. Ukraine has a leading place in the World in a land and soil resources availability per person.)

Unfortunately, the old adage that geography is destiny seems to be true. In that respect, the only thing worse than sharing a border with Serbia is sharing a border with Russia.

Finally, you need to know that we see you. You are not fighting in the dark. When this is over – and it will be over, when the Russians have withdrawn in shame and defeat, I hope to come to Mariupol to listen to your stories, because that is all that you will be left with. When this is over, I hope to come to a free Mariupol and a free Ukraine to pay homage to your sacrifice.

Emir Suljagic is ex-deputy defense minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A reading awareness project: Banned books list printed on free bookmarks

A banned books list printed on bookmarks should include a square to mark off the titles we have already read. I will start by checking To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nigh-time, by Mark Haddon :

Dateline Texas: 130 books were targeted by reactionary parents. 11 were banned. Frustrated students started their own club: Leander’s Banned Book’s Club.

And this:  An echo opinion letter published in The Washington Post:  Pretty soon, we’ll just not let children read at all. 

What? What is this?  "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nigh-time"??- Oh paaleeeze! The novel is narrated in the first-person perspective by Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy who is described as "a mathematician with some behavioural difficulties" living in Swindon, Wiltshire.

To the editor of The Washington Post:  I’m grateful to be a high school senior. Youth education has become highly politicized and is used as a pawn for politicians to win votes. And behind the deliberately vague wording lies a clear motive to restrict dialogue about sexuality and gender identity among students, some of whom might be looking for representation of their own.

What frustrates me most is the law’s illogical examples of banned materials, “descriptions, images or videos of sexual bestiality, lewd nudity, sexual excitement, sexual conduct, sadomasochistic abuse, coprophilia, urophilia - IOW, a paraphilic disorder classified under Other Specified Paraphilic Disorder in the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5),,, i.e., obsession with penises...or fetishism.” I might have missed a couple of days here and there, but I’m certain my classes weren’t covering books with urophilia any time in my 12 years of public education. 

In fact, the grouping of sexual excitement and sexual conduct with concepts such as sadomasochistic abuse is chilling.

Banned books!  How many have you read? 

It’s saddening that young children won’t have many trusted adults around them able to speak about such common phenomena. Additionally, this law will more than likely be subverted to target material with LGBTQ+ characters and themes. In the (sadly) polarized world we live in, it’s more important than ever to set an example of open-mindedness for children.

From Jessica Feng, in McLean Virginia

P.S.  In my Maine Writer opinion, we should consider organizing a movement of people who want to protect free speech to begin memorizing Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.

War in Ukraine began eight years ago!

February 2022 is an extension of Vladimir Putin's delusional expansion.

ANTI-WAR- Students for Liberty opinion echo:
"My family are from Russia and Ukraine, here’s what I think about this war," by Vera Kichanova

Ten years ago, I was elected to the municipal council in Moscow, becoming the first ever elected libertarian politician in Russia. Two years later, Putin annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine (yes, the Russo-Ukrainian War started eight years ago, not in February 2022). That’s when I realized I didn’t want anything to do with that regime anymore — and moved from Moscow to Kyiv.

We All Stand With Ukraine

As a councilor, I campaigned for more transparency, controlled public spending in my constituency, and supported grassroots activities. But, most importantly, we tried our best to challenge Putin’s monopoly on power.

We helped organize rallies with up to 150,000 participants, demanding fair elections and freedom of speech. We opposed the militarization of Russian society. I worked with the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee, exposing human rights violations within the Russian army.

None of these activities are safe in Putin’s Russia — and I’ve been arrested six times for my activism.

In 2014, we protested against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During the Euromaidan Revolution, I spent a dramatic weekend in Kyiv during which it became clear to me that Ukraine is a place where post-Soviet history is being made.

Being half Ukrainian myself, I’ve always felt a strong connection to this country. I spent a lot of time there when I was a child. My grandparents live in Pavlograd, a small mining town in eastern Ukraine where they are now getting used to air raid sirens as Putin’s soldiers attempt to capture the nearby city of Dnipro.

I spent two years in Kyiv working with Atlas Network and Students For Liberty, running educational programs, advocating for economic reforms, traveling throughout the country, and talking to young Ukrainians from Lviv to Kharkiv. Those were people of my age — the first free generation to grow up in the remnants of the Soviet empire. Putin’s invasion has been viewed as an attempt to restore the Soviet Union — something Ukrainians have walked away from by embracing liberal values.

We organized Liberty Classes — a series of campus lectures discussing the ideas of freedom and their implementation in the Ukrainian post-revolutionary environment. The project reached over 1,000 students and won the Event of the Year prize — an award that acknowledged not just our team but the enthusiastic Ukrainian youth who realize it takes more than a revolution to make the country free. “Students in this country are underappreciated resources for the future,” Tom Palmer told me in an interview while in Kyiv.

Kyiv has become my second home. I’m still trying to cope with the fact that the Kyiv I love so much — with breathtakingly beautiful architecture, street fairs, flea markets, and dance festivals under the bridge — is the same city that is now being bombed by Russian invaders.

What is not surprising to me, though, is the bravery which Ukrainians show as they react to the invasion. Ukrainians are now doing the job that we started over ten years ago — trying to put an end to probably the ugliest regime Europe has seen since 1945. They are fighting for our future, not just their own. And they deserve all our support. And they will win.

Liberty will prevail. Слава Україні!