more practice on the present simple tense

“There’s No Such Thing as Sound Science” by By Christie Aschwanden was a lead science writer for FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight, Science, Dec. 6, 2017 Science is being turned against itself. For decades, its twin ideals of transparency and rigor have been weaponized by those who disagree with results produced by the scientific method. Under the Trump administration, that fight has ramped up again. In a move ostensibly meant to reduce conflicts of interest, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has removed a number of scientists from advisory panels and replaced some of them with representatives from industries that the agency regulates. Like many in the Trump administration, Pruitt has also cast doubt on the reliability of climate science. For instance, in an interview with CNBC, Pruitt said that “measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do.” Similarly, Trump’s pick to head NASA, an agency that oversees a large portion the nation’s climate research, has insisted that research into human influence on climate lacks certainty, and he falsely claimed that “global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago.” Kathleen Hartnett White, Trump’s nominee to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a Senate hearing last month that she thinks we “need to have more precise explanations of the human role and the natural role” in climate change. The same entreaties crop up again and again: We need to root out conflicts. We need more precise evidence. What makes these arguments so powerful is that they sound quite similar to the points raised by proponents of a very different call for change that’s coming from within science. This other movement strives to produce more robust, reproducible findings. Despite having dissimilar goals, the two forces espouse principles that look surprisingly alike: Science needs to be transparent. Results and methods should be openly shared so that outside researchers can independently reproduce and validate them. The methods used to collect and analyze data should be rigorous and clear, and conclusions must be supported by evidence. These are the arguments underlying an “open science” reform movement that was created, in part, as a response to a “reproducibility crisis” that has struck some fields of science.1 But they’re also used as talking points by politicians who are working to make it more difficult for the EPA and other federal agencies to use science in their regulatory decision-making, under the guise of basing policy on “sound science.” Science’s virtues are being wielded against it. What distinguishes the two calls for transparency is intent: Whereas the “open science” movement aims to make science more reliable, reproducible and robust, proponents of “sound science” have historically worked to amplify uncertainty, create doubt and undermine scientific discoveries that threaten their interests. “Our criticisms are founded in a confidence in science,” said Steven Goodman, co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford and a proponent of open science. “That’s a fundamental difference — we’re critiquing science to make it better. Others are critiquing it to devalue the approach itself.” Calls to base public policy on “sound science” seem unassailable if you don’t know the term’s history. The phrase was adopted by the tobacco industry in the 1990s to counteract mounting evidence linking secondhand smoke to cancer. A 1992 Environmental Protection Agency report identified secondhand smoke as a human carcinogen, and Philip Morris responded by launching an initiative to promote what it called “sound science.” In an internal memo, Philip Morris vice president of corporate affairs Ellen Merlo wrote that the program was designed to “discredit the EPA report,” “prevent states and cities, as well as businesses from passing smoking bans” and “proactively” pass legislation to help their cause. The sound science tactic exploits a fundamental feature of the scientific process: Science does not produce absolute certainty. Contrary to how it’s sometimes represented to the public, science is not a magic wand that turns everything it touches to truth. Instead, it’s a process of uncertainty reduction, much like a game of 20 Questions. Any given study can rarely answer more than one question at a time, and each study usually raises a bunch of new questions in the process of answering old ones. “Science is a process rather than an answer,” said psychologist Alison Ledgerwood of the University of California, Davis. Every answer is provisional and subject to change in the face of new evidence. It’s not entirely correct to say that “this study proves this fact,” Ledgerwood said. “We should be talking instead about how science increases or decreases our confidence in something.” The tobacco industry’s brilliant tactic was to turn this baked-in uncertainty against the scientific enterprise itself. While insisting that they merely wanted to ensure that public policy was based on sound science, tobacco companies defined the term in a way that ensured that no science could ever be sound enough. The only sound science was certain science, which is an impossible standard to achieve. “Doubt is our product,” wrote one employee of the Brown & Williamson tobacco company in a 1969 internal memo. The note went on to say that doubt “is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’” and “establishing a controversy.” These strategies for undermining inconvenient science were so effective that they’ve served as a sort of playbook for industry interests ever since, said Stanford University science historian Robert Proctor. The sound science push is no longer just Philip Morris sowing doubt about the links between cigarettes and cancer. It’s also a 1998 action plan by the American Petroleum Institute, Chevron and Exxon Mobil to “install uncertainty” about the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. It’s industry-funded groups’ late-1990s effort to question the science the EPA was using to set fine-particle-pollution air-quality standards that the industry didn’t want. And then there was the more recent effort by Dow Chemical to insist on more scientific certainty before banning a pesticide that the EPA’s scientists had deemed risky to children. Now comes a move by the Trump administration’s EPA to repeal a 2015 rule on wetlands protection by disregarding particular studies. (To name just a few examples.) Doubt merchants aren’t pushing for knowledge, they’re practicing what Proctor has dubbed “agnogenesis” — the intentional manufacture of ignorance. This ignorance isn’t simply the absence of knowing something; it’s a lack of comprehension deliberately created by agents who don’t want you to know, Proctor said.2 In the hands of doubt-makers, transparency becomes a rhetorical move. “It’s really difficult as a scientist or policy maker to make a stand against transparency and openness, because well, who would be against it?” said Karen Levy, researcher on information science at Cornell University. But at the same time, “you can couch everything in the language of transparency and it becomes a powerful weapon.” For instance, when the EPA was preparing to set new limits on particulate pollution in the 1990s, industry groups pushed back against the research and demanded access to primary data (including records that researchers had promised participants would remain confidential) and a reanalysis of the evidence. Their calls succeeded and a new analysis was performed. The reanalysis essentially confirmed the original conclusions, but the process of conducting it delayed the implementation of regulations and cost researchers time and money. Delay is a time-tested strategy. “Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has,” said Marc Morano, a prominent critic of global warming research and the executive director of ClimateDepot.com, in the documentary “Merchants of Doubt” (based on the book by the same name). Morano’s site is a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which has received funding from the oil and gas industry. “We’re the negative force. We’re just trying to stop stuff.” Some of these ploys are getting a fresh boost from Congress. The Data Quality Act (also known as the Information Quality Act) was reportedly written by an industry lobbyist and quietly passed as part of an appropriations bill in 2000. The rule mandates that federal agencies ensure the “quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information” that they disseminate, though it does little to define what these terms mean. The law also provides a mechanism for citizens and groups to challenge information that they deem inaccurate, including science that they disagree with. “It was passed in this very quiet way with no explicit debate about it — that should tell you a lot about the real goals,” Levy said. But what’s most telling about the Data Quality Act is how it’s been used, Levy said. A 2004 Washington Post analysis found that in the 20 months following its implementation, the act was repeatedly used by industry groups to push back against proposed regulations and bog down the decision-making process. Instead of deploying transparency as a fundamental principle that applies to all science, these interests have used transparency as a weapon to attack very particular findings that they would like to eradicate. Now Congress is considering another way to legislate how science is used. The Honest Act, a bill sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas,3 is another example of what Levy calls a “Trojan horse” law that uses the language of transparency as a cover to achieve other political goals. Smith’s legislation would severely limit the kind of evidence the EPA could use for decision-making. Only studies whose raw data and computer codes were publicly available would be allowed for consideration. That might sound perfectly reasonable, and in many cases it is, Goodman said. But sometimes there are good reasons why researchers can’t conform to these rules, like when the data contains confidential or sensitive medical information.4 Critics, which include more than a dozen scientific organizations, argue that, in practice, the rules would prevent many studies from being considered in EPA reviews.5 It might seem like an easy task to sort good science from bad, but in reality it’s not so simple. “There’s a misplaced idea that we can definitively distinguish the good from the not-good science, but it’s all a matter of degree,” said Brian Nosek, executive director of the Center for Open Science. “There is no perfect study.” Requiring regulators to wait until they have (nonexistent) perfect evidence is essentially “a way of saying, ‘We don’t want to use evidence for our decision-making,’” Nosek said. Most scientific controversies aren’t about science at all, and once the sides are drawn, more data is unlikely to bring opponents into agreement. Michael Carolan, who researches the sociology of technology and scientific knowledge at Colorado State University, wrote in a 2008 paper about why objective knowledge is not enough to resolve environmental controversies. “While these controversies may appear on the surface to rest on disputed questions of fact, beneath often reside differing positions of value; values that can give shape to differing understandings of what ‘the facts’ are.” What’s needed in these cases isn’t more or better science, but mechanisms to bring those hidden values to the forefront of the discussion so that they can be debated transparently. “As long as we continue down this unabashedly naive road about what science is, and what it is capable of doing, we will continue to fail to reach any sort of meaningful consensus on these matters,” Carolan writes. The dispute over tobacco was never about the science of cigarettes’ link to cancer. It was about whether companies have the right to sell dangerous products and, if so, what obligations they have to the consumers who purchased them. Similarly, the debate over climate change isn’t about whether our planet is heating, but about how much responsibility each country and person bears for stopping it. While researching her book “Merchants of Doubt,” science historian Naomi Oreskes found that some of the same people who were defending the tobacco industry as scientific experts were also receiving industry money to deny the role of human activity in global warming. What these issues had in common, she realized, was that they all involved the need for government action. “None of this is about the science. All of this is a political debate about the role of government,” she said in the documentary. These controversies are really about values, not scientific facts, and acknowledging that would allow us to have more truthful and productive debates. What would that look like in practice? Instead of cherry-picking evidence to support a particular view (and insisting that the science points to a desired action), the various sides could lay out the values they are using to assess the evidence. For instance, in Europe, many decisions are guided by the precautionary principle — a system that values caution in the face of uncertainty and says that when the risks are unclear, it should be up to industries to show that their products and processes are not harmful, rather than requiring the government to prove that they are harmful before they can be regulated. By contrast, U.S. agencies tend to wait for strong evidence of harm before issuing regulations. Both approaches have critics, but the difference between them comes down to priorities: Is it better to exercise caution at the risk of burdening companies and perhaps the economy, or is it more important to avoid potential economic downsides even if it means that sometimes a harmful product or industrial process goes unregulated? In other words, under what circumstances do we agree to act on a risk? How certain do we need to be that the risk is real, and how many people would need to be at risk, and how costly is it to reduce that risk? Those are moral questions, not scientific ones, and openly discussing and identifying these kinds of judgment calls would lead to a more honest debate. Science matters, and we need to do it as rigorously as possible. But science can’t tell us how risky is too risky to allow products like cigarettes or potentially harmful pesticides to be sold — those are value judgements that only humans can make.

Create me a multiple choice test questions with 4 options on the following topic:Consumer Education for Different Audience 1. Children and Youth: - Focus: Building foundational knowledge about basic consumer concepts, making safe choices, understanding money and value, and recognizing scams and unsafe situations. 2. Teens and Young Adults: - Focus: Building financial literacy, responsible debt management, understanding contracts and agreements, responsible technology use, online safety, and consumer rights. 3. Working Adults and Families: - Focus: Managing budgets, making informed purchasing decisions, understanding credit and debt, finding consumer protection resources, and navigating complex financial products (mortgages, insurance, investments). 4. Seniors: - Focus: Protecting themselves from scams and fraud, understanding common consumer issues like telemarketing, identity theft, and online scams, managing medications and healthcare costs, and accessing community resources. 5. Special Populations: - Focus: Adapting consumer education programs to the specific needs of people with disabilities, immigrants, refugees, and other marginalized communities. 6. Business and Industry:- Focus: Understanding ethical marketing practices, complying with consumer protection laws, and providing clear and accurate information to consumers. 7. Policymakers and Regulators: - Focus: Understanding consumer needs, developing effective consumer protection laws, enforcing regulations, and ensuring a fair and competitive marketplace. Adapting consumer education programs for children, teens, and seniors requires tailoring content and delivery methods to their unique needs and learning styles. Children (Ages 5-12): - Understanding the concept of money: Teaching children about saving, spending, and the value of money. - Developing basic budgeting skills: Helping children learn to make choices about how to spend their allowance or pocket money. EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES •Focus on basic concepts: Introduce core concepts like saving, spending, and budgeting in a fun and engaging way. Use simple language and relatable examples. •Real-life scenarios: Use age-appropriate scenarios to illustrate financial concepts, like buying toys or snacks. •Parental involvement: Encourage parent participation and provide resources to help them reinforce lessons at home. Teens (Ages 13-18): - Building budgeting and financial planning skills: Teaching teens how to manage their money, set financial goals, and plan for the future. - Navigating the digital marketplace: Equipping teens with the knowledge and skills to make safe and informed online purchases, understand digital marketing, and protect themselves from scams. EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES • Practical skills: Focus on skills relevant to teens, like managing money for social activities, saving for college, and understanding credit cards. • Digital literacy: Address the growing influence of online shopping, social media advertising, and financial scams. • Real-world applications: Connect financial concepts to real-life decisions teens make, like choosing a part-time job or making purchases online. Seniors (Ages 65+) - Managing retirement savings and healthcare costs: Providing information and resources on retirement planning, Medicare and Medicaid, and other healthcare options. - Navigating the digital world: Offering technology training and resources to help seniors access online services and information safely and securely. EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES • Addressing specific concerns: Focus on topics relevant to senior citizens, like retirement planning, managing healthcare expenses, and avoiding scams. • Clear and concise communication: Use simple language and visual aids to ensure easy understanding. • Social interaction: Create opportunities for seniors to share experiences and learn from each other. Teaching Financial Literacy in school and Communities In Schools: Curriculum Integration: Financial literacy concepts can be seamlessly integrated into existing subjects, making learning more relevant and engaging. - Math: Budgeting exercises, calculating interest rates, analyzing financial data, and understanding compound interest are all natural applications of math skills. - Social Studies: Exploring the history of money, financial institutions, economic systems, and the impact of financial decisions on society provide valuable context. - Economics: Discussions about supply and demand, inflation, investment, and the role of consumers in the economy enhance financial literacy. Dedicated Courses: Offering elective courses or workshops specifically focused on personal finance provides deeper dives into crucial topics. - Personal Finance: Cover budgeting, saving, investing, credit, debt management, and insurance. - Entrepreneurship: Introduce concepts like business planning, marketing, financial forecasting, and managing cash flow. In Communities: Community Centers and Libraries: Workshops, seminars, and classes tailored to adults and families provide accessible learning opportunities. - Financial Planning: Cover budgeting, retirement planning, debt management, and estate planning. - Homeownership: Provide guidance on buying, selling, and maintaining a home. - Consumer Protection: Educate individuals about their rights and how to avoid scams. Partnerships with Financial Institutions: Collaborations with banks, credit unions, and financial advisors offer valuable resources, workshops, and financial literacy programs. Consumer Education for Low-Income and Vulnerable Populations Low-income refers to individuals or households with limited financial resources, typically below a certain threshold. Low-income individuals may face challenges like: 1. Limited education and job opportunities 2. Poor living conditions and housing 3. Food insecurity and malnutrition Causes of low income: 1. Unemployment or underemployment 2. Low-paying jobs or minimum wage 3. Limited education or skills 4. Single parenthood or large family size Vulnerable population'' is a term that is used to describe a group of people who possess some sort of disadvantage. elderly people, people with low incomes, homeless people, people in prison, migrant workers, pregnant women, Family Consumer Education: Managing Household Finances and Resources Financial literacy is the ability to understand and manage personal finances effectively. 1. Debt Debt is money you spend that isn’t yours. If you borrow money from the bank, use a credit card, or take out a short-term loan, or a payday loan, you are accumulating debt. Good debt is considered money borrowed for things that are absolutely necessary for making a life e.g. a house and for advancing your money-making potential e.g. an education. Bad debt is considered borrowing money or using a credit card to pay for things you don’t need, such as expensive clothes, hi-tech electronics, eating out at restaurants, going on holidays, etc. 2. Saving Saving is an essential part of financial wellness, a secure present, and a happy future. 3. Budgeting Budgeting is the life skill of planning and managing your money. By understanding exactly where your money goes every month, you are empowered to create an actionable plan by which you can spend less, by curtailing those unnecessary expenses and saving more for the things you need and want. 4. Investing Investing is all about creating and growing the wealth you need to enjoy a financially secure and happy future. It’s about putting your money into something that will make you a profit over time, such as property, retirement funds, and unit trusts Integrating Consumer Education into the Home Economics Curriculum. Integrating consumer education into the home economics curriculum can provide students with essential skills for making informed choices about their personal finances, food, clothing, and overall well-being. Here are some strategies and ideas for effectively incorporating consumer education: Financial Literacy Budgeting: Teach students how to create and manage a personal budget, including setting financial goals, tracking expenses, and understanding savings. Saving and Investment: Cover the basics of saving, including different saving accounts, and introduce concepts related to investing. Food and Nutrition Food Label Literacy: Engage students in learning how to read and interpret food labels, including nutrition facts and ingredient lists. Grocery Shopping Skills: Teach students how to compare product costs, understand unit pricing, and make healthy, budget-friendly choices while shopping. Clothing and Textile Education Consumer Choices in Clothing:Discuss factors influencing clothing purchases, such as quality, price, and sustainability. Fashion and Trends: Analyze the impact of marketing and advertising on consumer behavior regarding clothing. Sustainable Purchasing Eco-Friendly Choices: Raise awareness about environmentally friendly products and the importance of sustainability in consumer choices. Project-Based Learning - Assign real-life projects where students must apply their knowledge, such as creating a meal plan within a budget, planning a shopping list based on nutrient needs, or evaluating the cost-effectiveness of different products. Technology Integration - Use technology to teach students about online shopping, price comparison websites, and apps that aid budgeting and financial planning. Collaborative Learning Opportunities - Organize team projects where students work together to solve consumer-related problems, emphasizing teamwork and communication skills. Assessment and Reflection - Incorporate assessments that allow students to reflect on what they have learned about consumer education and how they can apply these skills in their daily lives.

Land warfare is a complex domain that involves the application of military power on the ground to achieve political and strategic objectives. Modern military doctrine, such as that used by the U.S. Army and the Indian Army, categorizes these elements into Combat Power and the Principles of War. 1. The 8 Elements of Combat Power Combat power is the total means of destructive, constructive, and information capabilities that a military unit can apply. It is typically broken down into eight key elements: ElementDescriptionLeadershipThe "multiplier" of all other elements. It provides purpose, direction, and motivation to soldiers.InformationEnables commanders to make informed decisions and creates opportunities to achieve results.Mission CommandThe system used to integrate the other elements. It focuses on decentralized execution based on the commander's intent.Movement & ManeuverThe movement of forces to gain a positional advantage over the enemy to deliver lethal or non-lethal effects.IntelligenceThe understanding of the enemy, terrain, weather, and civil considerations.FiresThe use of weapon systems (artillery, mortars, air support) to create specific lethal or non-lethal effects.SustainmentThe logistics required to maintain operations, including ammunition, fuel, food, and medical support.ProtectionThe preservation of the force so that the commander can apply maximum combat power.2. The Principles of War These are the enduring "rules of thumb" that guide how land forces are employed strategically and tactically: Objective: Direct every operation toward a clearly defined and attainable goal. Offensive: Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative. You cannot win by defending alone. Mass: Concentrate the effects of combat power at the most advantageous place and time. Economy of Force: Allocate the minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts so you can "mass" elsewhere. Maneuver: Place the enemy in a position of disadvantage through flexible movement. Unity of Command: Ensure all forces operate under a single responsible commander toward a common objective. Security: Prevent the enemy from gaining an unexpected advantage. Surprise: Strike the enemy at a time, place, or in a manner for which they are unprepared. Simplicity: Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans to minimize confusion in the "fog of war." 3. The Modern Legal Framework Land warfare is also governed by the Law of Land Warfare (International Humanitarian Law), which rests on four pillars: Military Necessity: Actions must be necessary to achieve a legitimate military goal. Distinction: Forces must distinguish between combatants and non-combatants (civilians). Proportionality: The anticipated harm to civilians must not be excessive in relation to the concrete military advantage gained. Unnecessary Suffering: Weapons and methods must not cause gratuitous or superfluous injury. Note: Contemporary land warfare is increasingly "Multi-Domain," meaning land forces must now integrate with cyber, space, and electronic warfare to be effective. , While land warfare uses many tools, the two primary "philosophies" of how to win a war are Attrition and Maneuver. Most modern conflicts are a spectrum of both, but understanding the pure form of each helps explain military strategy. 1. Attrition Warfare: The "Sledgehammer" Attrition warfare is a strategy where one side attempts to win by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel, equipment, and supplies. Core Logic: "I have more than you." It assumes that if you can destroy the enemy’s resources faster than they can replace them, you will eventually win. Focus: Firepower and mass. Success is measured by "body counts," equipment destroyed, and the steady seizing of terrain. Command Style: Usually centralized and methodical. It requires strict synchronization of massive resources (artillery, logistics, manpower). Historical Example: The Battle of Verdun (WWI). German Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn famously stated his goal was to "bleed France white" by forcing them to defend a position they could not afford to lose, regardless of the cost in lives. 2. Maneuver Warfare: The "Scalpel" Maneuver warfare seeks to shatter the enemy’s moral and physical cohesion—their ability to act as a unified force—rather than simply destroying every soldier. Core Logic: "I am faster and more unpredictable than you." It aims to create a state of chaos where the enemy's leadership can no longer make effective decisions. Focus: Speed, surprise, and dislocation (forcing the enemy to be in the wrong place at the wrong time). The OODA Loop: Developed by Col. John Boyd, this is the heart of maneuver theory. It stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. The goal is to cycle through these steps faster than the enemy, essentially "getting inside" their decision-making process until they collapse from confusion. Historical Example: The 1940 Invasion of France (Blitzkrieg). Instead of fighting a line-by-line battle of attrition, German forces used speed and concentrated armor to bypass strongpoints, cut communication lines, and cause a total systemic collapse of the French military in weeks. 3. Key Differences at a Glance FeatureAttrition WarfareManeuver WarfareObjectivePhysical destruction of the enemy army.Functional/Psychological collapse of the enemy.TargetThe enemy's strength (mass).The enemy's weakness (vulnerability).Primary ToolMassed Firepower.Movement and Tempo.Command"Command Push" (Top-down, rigid)."Recon Pull" (Decentralized, flexible).Success MetricExchange ratios (Kill counts).Disruption and loss of enemy control.4. The Modern Synthesis: "Schwerpunkt" In practice, no army is purely "maneuver" or "attrition." To maneuver successfully, you often need a period of attrition to punch a hole in the enemy's line. A critical concept here is the Schwerpunkt (Center of Gravity/Focus of Effort). A commander identifies the single most important place to strike and concentrates all available "elements of power" there. While the rest of the front might look like attrition, the Schwerpunkt is where the maneuver happens to achieve a breakthrough. Modern Reality: In high-intensity conflicts today (like the war in Ukraine), we see a "return to attrition" because modern sensors (drones, satellites) make it very difficult to achieve the surprise needed for pure maneuver warfare. When you can see everything, it's hard to be "unexpected."

MYTH The British helped the Jews displace the native Arab population of Palestine. FACT Herbert Samuel, a British Jew who served as the first High Commissioner of Palestine, placed restrictions on Jewish immigration “in the ‘interests of the present population’ and the ‘absorptive capacity’ of the country.”1 The influx of Jewish settlers was said to force the Arab fellahin (native peasants) from their land. This was when less than a million people lived in an area that now supports more than nine million. The British limited the absorptive capacity of Palestine when, in 1921, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill severed nearly four-fifths of Palestine—some thirty-five thousand square miles—to create a new Arab entity, Transjordan. As a consolation prize for the Hejaz and Arabia (which are both now Saudi Arabia) going to the Saud family, Churchill rewarded Sharif Hussein’s son Abdullah for his contribution to the war against Turkey by installing him as Transjordan’s emir. The British went further and placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in what remained of Palestine. By 1949, the British had allotted 87,500 acres of the 187,500 acres of cultivable land to Arabs and only 4,250 acres to Jews. This contradicted Article 6 of the Mandate which stated that “the Administration of Palestine…shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency…close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes.”2 Ultimately, the British admitted that the argument about the country’s absorptive capacity was specious. The Peel Commission said, “The heavy immigration in the years 1933–36 would seem to show that the Jews have been able to enlarge the absorptive capacity of the country for Jews.”3 MYTH The British allowed Jews to flood Palestine while Arab immigration was tightly controlled. FACT The British response to Jewish immigration set a precedent of appeasing the Arabs, which was followed for the duration of the Mandate. The British restricted Jewish immigration while allowing Arabs to enter the country freely. Apparently, London did not feel that a flood of Arab immigrants would affect the country’s “absorptive capacity.” During World War I, the Jewish population in Palestine declined because of the war, famine, disease, and expulsion by the Turks. In 1915, approximately 83,000 Jews lived in Palestine among 590,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs. According to the 1922 census, the Jewish population was 83,000, while the Arabs numbered 643,000.4 Thus, the Arab population grew exponentially while that of the Jews stagnated. In the mid-1920s, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased primarily because of anti-Jewish economic legislation in Poland and Washington’s imposition of restrictive quotas.5 The record number of immigrants in 1935 (see table) was a response to the growing persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The British administration considered this number too large, however, so the Jewish Agency was informed that less than one-third of the quota it asked for would be approved in 1936.6 The British gave in further to Arab demands by announcing in the 1939 White Paper that an independent Arab state would be created within ten years and that Jewish immigration was to be limited to 75,000 for the next five years, after which it was to cease altogether. It also forbade land sales to Jews in 95% of the territory of Palestine. The Arabs, nevertheless, rejected the proposal. Jewish Immigration to Palestine7 1919 1,806 1931 4,075 1920 8,223 1932 12,533 1921 8,294 1933 37,337 1922 8,685 1934 45,267 1923 8,175 1935 66,472 1924 13,892 1936 29,595 1925 34,386 1937 10,629 1926 13,855 1938 14,675 1927 3,034 1939 31,195 1928 2,178 1940 10,643 1929 5,249 1941 4,592 1930 4,944 By contrast, throughout the Mandatory period, Arab immigration was unrestricted. In 1930, the Hope Simpson Commission, sent from London to investigate the 1929 Arab riots, said the British practice of ignoring the uncontrolled illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan, and Syria had the effect of displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants.8 The British governor of the Sinai from 1922 to 1936 observed, “This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.”9 The Peel Commission reported in 1937 that the “shortfall of land is…due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.”10 MYTH The British changed their policy to allow Holocaust survivors to settle in Palestine. FACT The gates of Palestine remained closed for the duration of the war, stranding hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe, many of whom became victims of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” After the war, the British refused to allow the survivors of the Nazi nightmare to find sanctuary in Palestine. On June 6, 1946, President Truman urged the British government to relieve the suffering of the Jews confined to displaced persons camps in Europe by immediately accepting 100,000 Jewish immigrants. Britain’s foreign minister Ernest Bevin replied sarcastically that the United States wanted displaced Jews to immigrate to Palestine “because they did not want too many of them in New York.”11 Some Jews reached Palestine, many smuggled in on dilapidated ships organized by the Haganah. Between August 1945 and the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, sixty-five “illegal” immigrant ships, carrying 69,878 people, arrived from European shores. In August 1946, however, the British began to intern those they caught in camps on Cyprus. Approximately 50,000 people were detained in the camps, and 28,000 remained imprisoned when Israel declared independence.12 MYTH As the Jewish population grew, the plight of the Palestinian Arabs worsened. FACT In July 1921, Hasan Shukri, the mayor of Haifa and president of the Muslim National Associations, sent a telegram to the British government in reaction to a delegation of Palestinians that went to London to try to stop the implementation of the Balfour Declaration. Shukri wrote: We are certain that without Jewish immigration and financial assistance there will be no future development of our country as may be judged from the fact that the towns inhabited in part by Jews such as Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, and Tiberias are making steady progress while Nablus, Acre, and Nazareth where no Jews reside are steadily declining.13 The Jewish population increased by 470,000 between World War I and World War II, while the non-Jewish population rose by 588,000.14 The permanent Arab population increased by 120% between 1922 and 1947.15 This rapid growth of the Arab population was a result of several factors. One was immigration from neighboring states—constituting 37% of the total immigration to pre-state Israel—by Arabs who wanted to take advantage of the higher standard of living the Jews had made possible.16 The Arab population also grew because of the improved living conditions created by the Jews as they drained malarial swamps and brought improved sanitation and health care to the region. Thus, for example, the Muslim infant mortality rate fell from 201 per thousand in 1925 to 94 per thousand in 1945, and life expectancy rose from 37 years in 1926 to 49 in 1943.17 The Arab population increased the most in cities where large Jewish populations had created new economic opportunities. From 1922–1947, the non-Jewish population increased by 290% in Haifa, 131% in Jerusalem, and 158% in Jaffa. The growth in Arab towns was more modest: 42% in Nablus, 78% in Jenin, and 37% in Bethlehem.18 MYTH Jews stole Arab land. FACT Despite the growth in their population, the Arabs continued to assert they were being displaced. From the beginning of World War I, however, part of Palestine’s land was owned by absentee landlords who lived in Cairo, Damascus, and Beirut. About 80% of the Palestinian Arabs were debt-ridden peasants, semi-nomads, and Bedouins.19 Jews went out of their way to avoid purchasing land in areas where Arabs might be displaced. They sought land that was largely uncultivated, swampy, cheap, and—most important—without tenants. In 1920, Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion expressed his concern about the Arab fellahin, whom he viewed as “the most important asset of the native population.” He insisted that “under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them.” Instead, he advocated helping liberate them from their oppressors. “Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement,” Ben-Gurion added, “should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price.”20 Jews only began to purchase cultivated land after buying all the uncultivated territory. Many Arabs were willing to sell because of the migration to coastal towns and because they needed money to invest in the citrus industry.21 When John Hope Simpson arrived in Palestine in May 1930, he observed, “They [the Jews] paid high prices for the land and, in addition, they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay.”22 In 1931, Lewis French conducted a survey of landlessness for the British government and offered new plots to any Arabs who had been “dispossessed.” British officials received more than 3,000 applications, of which 80% were ruled invalid by the government’s legal adviser because the applicants were not landless Arabs. This left only about 600 landless Arabs, 100 of whom accepted the government land offer.23 In April 1936, a new outbreak of Arab attacks on Jews was instigated by local Palestinian leaders who were later joined by Arab volunteers led by a Syrian guerrilla named Fawzi al-Qawuqji, the commander of the Arab Liberation Army. By November, when the British finally sent a new commission headed by Lord Peel to investigate, 89 Jews had been killed and more than 300 wounded.24 The Peel Commission’s report found that Arab complaints about Jewish land acquisition were baseless. It pointed out that “much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased…There was at the time of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land.”25 Moreover, the Commission found the shortage was “due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.” The report concluded that the presence of Jews in Palestine, along with the work of the British administration, had resulted in higher wages, an improved standard of living, and ample employment opportunities.26 It is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping (emphasis in the original). —Transjordan’s king Abdullah27 Even at the height of the Arab revolt in 1938 (which began in April 1936 with the murder of two Jews by Arabs and the subsequent murder of two Arab workers by members of the Jewish underground28), the British high commissioner to Palestine believed the Arab landowners were complaining about sales to Jews to drive up prices for lands they wished to sell. Many Arab landowners had been so terrorized by Arab rebels they decided to leave Palestine and sell their property to the Jews.29 The Jews paid exorbitant prices to wealthy landowners for small tracts of arid land. “In 1944, Jews paid between $1,000 and $1,100 per acre in Palestine, mostly for arid or semiarid land; in the same year, rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre.”30 By 1947, Jewish holdings in Palestine amounted to about 463,000 acres. Approximately 45,000 were acquired from the mandatory government, 30,000 were bought from various churches, and 387,500 were purchased from Arabs. Analyses of land purchases from 1880 to 1948 show that 73% of Jewish plots were purchased from large landowners, not poor fellahin.31 Many leaders of the Arab nationalist movement, including members of the Muslim Supreme Council, and the mayors of Gaza, Jerusalem, and s sold land to the Jews. As’ad el-Shuqeiri, a Muslim religious scholar and father of Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Ahmed Shuqeiri, took Jewish money for his land. Even King Abdullah leased land to the Jews.32 MYTH The British helped the Palestinians to live peacefully with the Jews. FACT In 1921, Haj Amin el-Husseini first began to organize fedayeen (“one who sacrifices himself”) to terrorize Jews. El-Husseini hoped to duplicate the success of Kemal Atatürk in Turkey by driving the Jews out of Palestine just as Kemal had driven the invading Greeks from his country.33 Arab radicals gained influence because the British administration was unwilling to take effective action against them until they began a revolt against British rule. Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, former head of British military intelligence in Cairo, and later chief political officer for Palestine and Syria, wrote in his diary that British officials “incline towards the exclusion of Zionism in Palestine.” The British encouraged the Palestinians to attack the Jews. According to Meinertzhagen, Col. Bertie Harry Waters-Taylor (financial adviser to the military administration in Palestine 1919–23) met with el-Husseini in 1920, a few days before Easter, and told him that “he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world…that Zionism was unpopular not only with the Palestine administration but in Whitehall.” He added that “if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General [Louis] Bols [chief administrator in Palestine, 1919–20] and General [Edmund] Allenby [commander of the Egyptian force, 1917–19, then high commissioner of Egypt] would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home. Waters-Taylor explained that freedom could only be attained through violence.”34 El-Husseini took the colonel’s advice and instigated a riot. The British withdrew their troops and the Jewish police from Jerusalem, allowing the Arab mob to attack Jews and loot their shops. Because of el-Husseini’s overt role in instigating the pogrom, the British decided to arrest him. He escaped, however, and was sentenced to ten years in absentia. A year later, some British Arabists convinced High Commissioner Herbert Samuel to pardon el-Husseini and to appoint him Mufti (a cleric in charge of Jerusalem’s Islamic holy places). By contrast, Vladimir Jabotinsky and several followers, who had formed a Jewish defense organization during the unrest, were sentenced to 15 years. They were released a few months later.35 Samuel met with el-Husseini on April 11, 1921, and was assured “that the influences of his family and himself would be devoted to tranquility.” Three weeks later, riots in Jaffa and elsewhere left forty-three Jews dead.36 El-Husseini consolidated his power and took control of all Muslim religious funds in Palestine. He used his authority to gain control over the mosques, the schools, and the courts. No Arab could reach an influential position without being loyal to the Mufti. His power was so absolute that “no Muslim in Palestine could be born or die without being beholden to Haj Amin.”37 The Mufti’s henchmen also ensured he would have no opposition by systematically killing Palestinians who discussed cooperation with the Jews from rival clans. As the spokesman for Palestinian Arabs, el-Husseini did not ask that Britain grant them independence. On the contrary, in a letter to Churchill in 1921, he demanded that Palestine be reunited with Syria and Transjordan.38 The Arabs found rioting an effective political tool because of the lax British response toward violence against Jews. In handling each riot, the British prevented Jews from protecting themselves but made little effort to prevent the Arabs from attacking them. After each outbreak, a British commission of inquiry would try to establish the cause of the violence. The conclusion was always the same: The Arabs feared being displaced by the Jews. To stop the rioting, the commissions would recommend that restrictions be placed on Jewish immigration. Thus, the Arabs learned they could always stop the influx of Jews by staging riots. This cycle began after a series of riots in May 1921. After failing to protect the Jewish community from Arab mobs, the British appointed the Haycraft Commission to investigate the cause of the violence. Although the panel concluded the Arabs had been the aggressors, it rationalized the cause of the attack: “The fundamental cause of the riots was a feeling among the Arabs of discontent with, and hostility to, the Jews, due to political and economic causes, and connected with Jewish immigration, and with their conception of Zionist policy.”39 One consequence of the violence was the institution of a temporary ban on Jewish immigration. The Arab fear of being “displaced” or “dominated” was an excuse for their attacks on Jewish settlers. Note, too, that these riots were not inspired by nationalistic fervor—nationalists would have rebelled against their British overlords—they were motivated by economics, the radical Islamic views of the Mufti, and misunderstanding. In 1929, Arab provocateurs convinced the masses that the Jews had designs on the Temple Mount (a tactic still used today to incite violence). A Jewish religious observance at the Western Wall, which forms a part of the Temple Mount, served as a pretext for rioting by Arabs against Jews, which spilled out of Jerusalem into other villages and towns, including Safed and Hebron. Again, the British administration made no effort to prevent the violence, and, after it began, the British did nothing to protect the Jewish population. After six days of mayhem, the British finally brought troops in to quell the disturbance. By this time, most of Hebron’s Jews had fled or been killed. In all, 133 Jews were killed and 399 wounded in the pogroms.40 After the riots, the British ordered an investigation, resulting in the Passfield White Paper. It said the “immigration, land purchase and settlement policies of the Zionist Organization were already or were likely to become, prejudicial to Arab interests. It understood the mandatory government’s obligation to the non-Jewish community to mean that Palestine’s resources must be primarily reserved for the growing Arab economy.”41 This meant it was necessary to restrict Jewish immigration and land purchases. MYTH The Mufti was not a Nazi collaborator. FACT In 1941, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, fled to Germany and met with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, and other Nazi leaders. He wanted to persuade them to extend the Nazis’ anti-Jewish program to the Arab world. The Mufti sent Hitler fifteen drafts of declarations he wanted Germany and Italy to make concerning the Middle East. One called on the two countries to declare the illegality of the Jewish home in Palestine. He also asked the Axis powers to “accord to Palestine and to other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries in accordance with the interest of the Arabs, and by the same method that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries.”42 In November 1941, the Mufti met with Hitler, who told him the Jews were his foremost enemy. The Nazi dictator rebuffed the Mufti’s requests for a declaration in support of the Arabs, however, telling him the time was not right. The Mufti offered Hitler his “thanks for the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches.” He added, “The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely…the Jews.” Hitler told the Mufti he opposed the creation of a Jewish state and that Germany’s objective was destroying the Jewish element in the Arab sphere.43 In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the Mufti as a war criminal for his role in recruiting twenty thousand Muslim volunteers for the SS, who participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary. He escaped French detention in 1946, however, and continued his fight against the Jews from Cairo and later Beirut where he died in 1974. MYTH The bombing of the King David Hotel was part of a deliberate terror campaign against civilians. FACT British troops seized the Jewish Agency compound on June 29, 1946, and confiscated large quantities of documents. At about the same time, more than 2,500 Jews from all over Palestine were arrested. A week later, news of a massacre of 40 Jews in a pogrom in Poland reminded the Jews of Palestine how Britain’s restrictive immigration policy had condemned thousands to death. In response to the British provocations, and a desire to demonstrate that the Jews’ spirit could not be broken, the United Resistance Movement planned to bomb the King David Hotel, which housed the British military command and the Criminal Investigation Division in addition to hotel guests. The Haganah pulled out of the plot and left it up to the Irgun. Irgun leader Menachem Begin stressed his desire to avoid civilian casualties and the plan was to warn the British so they would evacuate the building before it was blown up. Three telephone calls were placed on July 22, 1946, one to the hotel, another to the French Consulate, and a third to the Palestine Post warning that explosives in the King David Hotel would soon be detonated. The call to the hotel was received and ignored. Begin quotes one British official who supposedly refused to evacuate the building, saying, “We don’t take orders from the Jews.”44 As a result, when the bombs exploded, the casualty toll was high: 91 killed and 45 injured. Among the casualties were 15 Jews. Few people in the main part of the hotel were injured.45 For decades, the British denied they had been warned. In 1979, however, a member of the British Parliament provided the testimony of a British officer who heard other officers in the King David Hotel bar joking about a Zionist threat to the headquarters. The officer who overheard the conversation immediately left the hotel and survived.46 In contrast to Arab attacks against Jews, which Arab leaders hailed as heroic actions, the Jewish National Council denounced the bombing of the King David.47 1 Aharon Cohen, Israel and the Arab World, (NY: Funk and Wagnalls, 1970), p. 172

ORIGINS AND MEANING OF HISTORY When was the first time you heard the word ‘history’? History has always been with us as people. How is history referred to in your language? History is common to all ethnic groups in Ghana. All ethnic groups in Ghana describe history in their local languages. The origins and meaning of history help us understand how past events have shaped the world we live in today. By exploring these beginnings, we can trace the development of societies, cultures, and civilisations, gaining insights into the experiences, challenges, and achievements of those who came before us. Understanding history offers us a deeper connection to our heritage and a clearer perspective on the present and future. The word ‘history’ has conventional and non-conventional origins or roots. Let’s delve deeper into these two main origins of history. The Non-conventional Origin of History History is not foreign to Ghanaians; we have always owned our history. This is known as non-conventional history. Its origins can be traced to the indigenous terms used by different communities and ethnic groups in Ghana to describe “history.” The Akans use the phrase ‘abakɔsɛm’ to refer to past events. The Dagbon people call it ‘Taarihi,’ the Ewes refer to it as ‘gbedenyawo’ or ‘blemanyawo,’ the Gas say ‘blemasaji,’ and the Gonjas use the term ‘Adrashɜη.’ As you can see, history is not new to our societies. Despite the different languages, one similarity across these non-conventional descriptions is their reference to significant past events. Though the words may vary, they all carry the same meaning and understanding, showing that history has always been part of our ethnic groups. Since prehistoric times, Ghanaians have preserved their history through narratives, songs, storytelling, drum language, oaths, and dirges. These sources reflect how Ghanaians understand and value history within their respective ethnic groups. Our understanding of history is shaped by our customs, practices, and traditions, such as chieftaincy, wars, marriages, and festivals. The Conventional Origin of History The word ‘history’ comes from the Greek word ‘historia,’ which means ‘inquiry’ in English. The term became popular and widely used in the 5th century BCE/BC when people began to study history in a more rational and structured way. This was the period when Herodotus described his investigation into the past, focusing on the events that led to the Persian War. Herodotus is often called the ‘father of history’ because of his early efforts to approach the study of history in a logical and systematic manner.

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