Whereas most traditional historical narratives say that Jim Crow was dismantled by the modern day civil rights movement, Michelle Alexander argues otherwise in The New Jim Crow. She posits that the denial of citizenship for African Americas was the plan of the Founding Fathers, and subsequent generations of Americans have found new ways to ensure the survival of that plan. The mass incarceration of black men is the current chosen method by which America continues this practice; indeed, Alexander says it has become the “new racial caste system.”

When Kendra Castaneda’s beloved faced torture in solitary confinement, his beloved, a regular, Californian suburban, young woman would have never guessed that only nine months later, she would be an Examiner.com “Inspiring Americans Award” nominee for courageously sparking human rights hope for 100,000 secretly tortured people in the United States prison industrial complex, up to 6,000 in California alone, all horribly abused in solitary confinement, indefinitely, as the National Defence Authorization Act 2012 codifies.

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Copyright Deborah Dupré 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Mustafa Tamimi was a 28-year-old resident of the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. His meticulously trimmed beard served as the centerpiece of his handsome face.

In December 2009, when an Israeli soldier shot him from a short distance with a tear gas canister, half of Mustafa's face went missing. More soldiers laughed as his horrified family tried to accompany him to a nearby hospital, according to activists present at the scene. Only the mother was finally able to obtain a special permit from the Israeli military, which allowed her to be with her son.

Mustafa's crime? He, along with Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists, protested the besiegement of Nabi Saleh by the illegal Jewish settlement of Halamish. Halamish has existed since 1977 and drastically grown in size and population ever since, taking over privately-owned Palestinian land. As of late, Nabi Saleh has been struggling for mere survival as its fresh water spring has also been seized by settlers under the watchful eye of the Israeli army.

Mustafa died so that the village of Nabi Saleh could live. The struggle will continue for years.

This time of year is ideal for reflecting on the miracle of Christmas 1914, that famous temporary truce and friendship between opposing sides in the midst of a war. Here was a new type of slaughter confronted with a new type of humanism, the leading edges of two opposing trends.

An op-ed in the New York Times last week by Steven Pinker and Joshua Goldstein argues that peace, rather than war, was the dominant development, and that over the millennia, centuries, decades, and right up to this moment, "War Really Is Going Out of Style."

Of course, war can potentially be eliminated, and that is already a very valuable point to be making. War isn't in our genes. We aren't doomed to always have it with us. Even more valuable would be a successful argument that all types of violence have been decreasing, including war. That is the argument Pinker attempts, with — I think — great but less complete success than he imagines, in his new book "The Better Angels of Our Nature."