Booed at Columbia University, Johnson warns to bring National Guard to quell pro-Palestine protests
Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson at Columbia University, in New York City on April 24, 2024. (Photo by Reuters)
Press TV – April 25, 2024
House Speaker Mike Johnson has threatened to use National Guard against students’ pro-Palestinian protests at US universities as he got booed and heckled at Columbia University.
Following a meeting with Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives along with a group of Republican House members urged Shafik to step down if she fails to control Gaza war demonstrations on campus during a press briefing at Low Library on Wednesday.
Johnson was joined by GOP Reps. Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis and Anthony D’Esposito, all from New York, and Virginia Foxx of North Carolina.
“We just can’t allow this kind of hatred and anti-Semitism to flourish on our campuses. And it must be stopped in its tracks. Those who are perpetrating this violence should be arrested,” he said, accusing protesters of chasing down Jewish students and harassing them.
Students chanted “Free Palestine” and heckled and loudly booed Johnson and demanded his return to Washington DC, with the noise of protesters almost overpowering his speech.
Johnson, who also met with Jewish students before his remarks, said that he plans to urge US President Joe Biden to take executive action against the protests if necessary, adding, “If this is not contained quickly, and if these threats and intimidation are not stopped, there is an appropriate time for the National Guard.”
Protesters shouted “stop the genocide” as other Republican leaders spoke. The Republicans accused protesters of being part of the problem and supporting the resistance movements of Hamas and Hezbollah.
New York Democrats criticize Johnson for “politicizing” the ongoing pro-Palestinian protests in Columbia, with Gov. Kathy Hochul stating that the presence of an entourage is exacerbating the division.
Johnson said in an interview after his speech that he respects the right to protest, but that he thought the students on campus had crossed into harassment.
Pro-Palestinian academic activism has grown significantly across the US since the onset of the Israeli regime’s US-backed war of genocide against the Gaza Strip.
Starting from the Colombia University in New York, protest encampments with a unified demand that their schools cut financial ties to Israel have been spread across the country. Demonstrations have been held in many universities such as Harvard, MIT, UT and other universities in Michigan, Minnesota and Colombia.
They are calling for universities to distance themselves from any companies that are advancing Israel’s savage military campaign in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Johnson’s speech came hours after Biden officially signed into law a long-awaited foreign aid bill for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan that had faced considerable delays in the House due to political gridlock.
The new package will provide $26 billion for the Israeli regime, which has been engaged in a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip since last October.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the billions of dollars in US assistance, writing on X that it “demonstrates strong bipartisan support for Israel.”
From Bird Flu to Climate Snakes
By Breeauna Sagdal | Brownstone Institute | April 24, 2024
Seasoned veterinarians and livestock producers alike have been scratching their heads trying to understand the media’s response to the avian flu. Headlines across every major news outlet warn of humans becoming infected with the “deadly” bird flu after one reported case of pink-eye in a human.
The entire narrative is predicated upon a long-disputed claim that Covid-19 was the result of a zoonotic jump—the famed Wuhan bat wet-market theory.
While the source of Covid is hotly contested within the scientific community, the policy vehicle at the center of this dialectic began years prior to Sars-CoV-2 and is quite resolute in force and effect.
In 2016, the Gates Foundation donated to the World Health Organization to create the OneHealth Initiative. Since 2020, the CDC has adopted and implemented the OneHealth Initiative to build a “collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach—working at the local, regional, national, and global levels—with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment.”
In the aftermath of Covid-19, the OneHealth Initiative began taking shape, due largely in part to millions of tax dollars appropriated through ARP (American Rescue Plan) funding.
Through its APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Investigation System) the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) was given $300 million in 2021 to begin implementing “a risk-based, comprehensive, integrated disease monitoring and surveillance system domestically…to build additional capacity for zoonotic disease surveillance and prevention,” globally.
“The One Health concept recognizes that the health of people, animals, and the environment are all linked,” said USDA Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Jenny Lester Moffitt.
According to the USDA’s press release, the Biden-Harris administration’s OneHealth approach will also help to ensure “new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry practices,” by “making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America.”
In other words, the federal government is using regulatory enforcement to intervene in the marketplace, in addition to subsidizing corporations with tax dollars to direct a planned economic outcome—ending meat consumption.
Climate-Smart Commodities – Planning the Economy through Subsidized Intervention
Under the recently announced Climate-Smart Commodities program, the USDA has appropriated $3.1 billion in tax subsidies to one hundred and forty-one new private Climate-Smart projects, ranging from carbon sequestration to Climate-Smart meat and forestry practices.
Private investors such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos – who just committed $1 billion to the development of lab cultured meat-like molds, and meat grown in petri dishes, to
Ballpark, formerly known for its hot dogs but is now harvesting python meat, is rushing to cash in on this new industry, and the OneHealth/USDA certification program.
Culling The Herd – Regulatory Intervention in the Marketplace
Meanwhile, the last vestiges of America’s food freedom and decentralized food sources are quietly being targeted by the full force of the federal government.
The once voluntary APHIS System is poised to become the mandatory APHIS-15, which among many other changes, “the system will be renamed Animal Health, Disease, and Pest Surveillance and Management System, USDA/APHIS-15. This system is used by APHIS to collect, manage, and evaluate animal health data for disease and pest control and surveillance programs.”
Among those “many changes” that APHIS-15 is undergoing, one should be of particular interest to the public—the removal of all references to the voluntary* Bovine Johne’s Disease Control Program.
“Updating the authority for maintenance of the system to remove reference to the Bovine Johne’s Disease Control Program.”
In addition to removing references to the once-voluntary herd culling program, the USDA is also implementing mandatory RFID ear tags in cattle and bison.
According to the USDA/APHIS-15, expanded authority places disease tracing in their jurisdiction and the radio frequency ear tags are necessary for the “rapid and accurate recordkeeping for this volume of animals and movement,” which they say “is not achievable without electronic systems.”
The notice clearly spells out that RFID tags “may be read without restraint as the animal goes past an electronic reader.”
“Once the reader scans the tag, the electronically collected tag number can be rapidly and accurately transmitted from the reader to a connected electronic database.”
However, industry leaders and lawmakers alike have said the database will be used to track vaccination history and movement, and that this data may be used to impact the market rate of cattle and bison at the time of processing.
Centralized Control of Processing/Production via Public-Private Partnership Agreements
In addition to the vast new authority of the USDA funded through the OneHealth Initiative, and the ARP, the EPA has also created its own unique set of regulatory burdens upon the entire meat industry.
On March 25, 2024, the EPA finalized a new set of Clean Water Act rule changes to limit nitrogen and phosphorus “pollutants” in downstream water treatment facilities from processing facilities. While the EPA’s interpretation of authority and jurisdiction over wastewater is concerning long-term, the broader context of consolidated processing under four multinational meat-packing companies is of much greater concern for the immediate future.
With few exceptions, in the United States it is illegal to sell meat without a USDA certification. Currently, the only way to access USDA certification is through a USDA-certified processing facility.
According to the EPA, the new rules will impact up to 845 processing facilities nationwide, unless facilities drastically limit the amount of meat they process each year.
With processing capabilities being the number one barrier to market for livestock producers, and billions of dollars in grants being awarded to Climate-Smart food substitutes, the amount of government intervention into the marketplace becomes very clear.
The United States, once a consumer-demand free market society, is currently witnessing the use of government force, and intervention tactics to steer and manipulate the marketplace. Similar to 1930’s Italy, this is being achieved by the state within the state, through the use of selectionism, protectionism, and economic planning between public-private partnership agreements.
The long-term and unavoidable problem with economic fascism is that it leads to authoritarian and centralized control, from which escape is impossible.
As each industry becomes centralized and consolidated under the few, consumer choice simultaneously disappears. As choice disappears, so does the ability of the individual to meet their specific and unique needs.
Eventually, the individual no longer serves a role outside of its usefulness to the state—the final exhale before the last python squeeze.
A Warped View of Patriotism on Pat Tillman
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | April 24, 2024
A recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times demonstrates what is a warped interpretation of the term “patriotism.” The op-ed is about former football player Pat Tillman, who was killed in Afghanistan twenty years ago. It’s written by Bill Dwyre, a former sports editor for the Times.
Dwyre reminds us that Tillman was motivated to join the military after the 9/11 attacks. He gave up a $3.6 million football contract to join the U.S. military and was hoping to be sent to Afghanistan to fight the terrorists.
Dwyre writes, “It was a can’t-miss story of patriotism. Americans applauded from the safety and comfort of our homes and communities.” (Since he uses the pronoun “our,” presumably Dwyre fell into the “safety and comfort” group rather than the “patriot” group.)
Unfortunately, however, Dwyre doesn’t explain why Tillman’s act was one of “can’t miss” patriotism. Apparently for him it’s a self-evident truth.
No declaration of war
The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It is the higher law that we the people impose on government officials. We are expected to obey their laws, and they punish us when we fail to do so. By the same token, they are supposed to obey our law, the Constitution.
The Constitution requires a congressional declaration of war as a prerequisite to a president’s waging war against any other nation-state. If a president and his army wage war without a congressional declaration of war, they are acting in violation of the law.
It is undisputed that President Bush did not secure a congressional declaration of war from Congress before he ordered his military to invade Afghanistan. That made their war illegal under our form of government.
How can participating in an illegal war be considered “patriotic”? Dwyre doesn’t explain that.
The U.S. was the aggressor under Nuremberg
Moreover, the common perception is that Bush invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban regime, which was governing the country, had been complicit in the 9/11 attacks by having knowingly harbored Osama bin Laden, who U.S. officials suspected had orchestrated the attacks.
Not so. Bush initiated his war because the Taliban regime refused to comply with his unconditional demand to deliver bin Laden into the hands of the Pentagon and the CIA. Yet, there was no extradition treaty between Afghanistan and the United States and, therefore, Afghanistan was operating within its rights under international law to refuse Bush’s unconditional extradition demand.
Nonetheless, knowing that the Pentagon and the CIA would torture bin Laden into confessing to the crime, Afghanistan offered to deliver him to an independent nation for a fair trial. In making the offer, Afghanistan sought the same amount of proof that would be required in a normal extradition hearing. The U.S. government refused the offer, perhaps because it was unable to provide such proof.
Therefore, given that Afghanistan had the authority under international law to refuse Bush’s extradition demand, that makes Bush’s invasion illegal under the war-of-aggression provision of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.
How can participation in an unconstitutional and illegal war be considered “patriotic”? Unfortunately, Dwyre fails to explain.
If one assumes that the 9/11 attackers were the ones who did the attacking (as compared to the attacks being an “inside job,” as some believe), it’s worth pointing out that they were motivated by the death and destruction that the U.S. government’s foreign policy had wreaked in the Middle East. But of course, a real “patriot” does not bring up that discomforting fact and instead blindly supports the government’s claim that the terrorists attacked us out of hatred for our “freedom and values.”
Tillman’s opposition to the Iraq War
One of the fascinating aspects of Dwyre’s op-ed glorifying Tillman’s patriotism is what he leaves out of the op-ed. Tillman was an outspoken opponent of Bush’s invasion and war of aggression against Iraq. Dwyre doesn’t even mention that, which is revealing.
Keep in mind, after all, that Bush’s war on Iraq was also waged without a congressional declaration of war, making it illegal under our form of government. Bush’s claim that he was waging to war to enforce UN resolutions falls flat because only the UN can enforce its resolutions. The fact is that the U.S. war on Iraq was an even clearer case of a war of aggression under the Nuremberg principles than the U.S. war on Afghanistan.
Despite Tillman’s fierce objections to the U.S. war on Iraq, the U.S. military nonetheless ordered him to “serve” in Iraq, which he did. Keep in mind though that every U.S. soldier takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution and is under a legal and moral obligation to refuse to obey unlawful orders. Tillman chose to obey the unlawful order to deploy to Iraq.
U.S. government lies
After his “service” in Iraq, Tillman was deployed to Afghanistan, where he continued to speak out against the U.S. war on Iraq. It was there that he was killed. As Dwyre points out, the U.S. military initially lied about his death, claiming falsely that he was killed by enemy fire. In fact, what actually happened is that he was killed by his own men in what was described as “friendly fire.”
In 2006, Tillman’s brother, Kevin Tillman, wrote a scathing op-ed on truthdig.com, in which he echoed his brother Pat’s view of the Iraq war: “Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.”
Why would’t Dwyre mention Pat Tillman’s (and his brother’s) fierce opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq in his op-ed? My hunch is that it’s because he considers opposition to U.S. wars to be unpatriotic and, therefore, Tillman’s apparent lack of “patriotism” with respect to Iraq doesn’t fit conveniently within his patriotism narrative. Under Dwyre’s warped interpretation of patriotism, apparently it’s only those who blindly support the U.S. national-security state’s foreign wars and its interventionist foreign policy who should be considered “patriots.” Apparently, those who reject such wars and choose instead to remain in the “safety and comfort” of their homes instead of fighting them should be considered non-patriots.
Pakistan under risk of sanctions over trade deal with Iran: Washington
The Cradle | April 24, 2024
Washington threatened Pakistan with sanctions on 23 April over a trade agreement recently signed with Iran.
“We advise anyone considering business deals with Iran to be aware of the potential risk of sanctions. Ultimately, the Government of Pakistan can speak to their own foreign policy pursuits,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said on 23 April.
The warning came after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Pakistan on 22 April and met with top officials, including Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
“Both sides agreed to increase the volume of bilateral trade to 10 billion US dollars in the next five years,” Sharif’s office said in a statement.
Raisi and Sharif also discussed during the visit the importance of energy cooperation between Tehran and Islamabad.
A gas pipeline project between the two, dating back over a decade and aimed at allowing the flow of Iranian gas into Pakistan, has been consistently held up by the US.
A US official revealed last month that Washington has set a “goal” to prevent the construction of the Iran–Pakistan gas pipeline. The project has been delayed by nearly a decade in large part due to US economic pressure.
“I fully support the efforts by the US government to prevent this pipeline from happening,” US Assistant Secretary Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, Donald Lu, said during a congressional hearing on 19 March. “We are working toward that goal,” he stressed.
On Wednesday, Iran and Pakistan issued a joint statement calling on the UN Security Council “to prevent Israel’s regime from its adventurism in the region and its illegal acts attacking its neighbors and targeting foreign diplomatic facilities.”
The statement also called “for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, unimpeded humanitarian access to the besieged people of Gaza, return of the displaced Palestinians, as well as ensuring accountability of the crimes being committed by the Israeli regime. They reiterated their support for a just, comprehensive, and durable solution based on the aspirations of the people of Palestine,” according to the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Revealed: Israel’s hidden history of attacks on Iran
By Robert Inlakesh | MintPress News | April 17, 2024
Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel was framed in the West as a reckless attempt to spark a major regional war, but in reality, Israel has been attacking Iran for decades.
As is routinely the case with Western-backed wars, the corporate media’s timeline begins at the moment that suits their narrative. We have seen this play out recently, with the attempt to rob the Gaza war of all contexts before October 7, 2023. Similarly, when it comes to Israel’s conflict with Iran, the two have been embroiled in what is referred to as a “shadow war,” the details of which are pretty shocking.
While the international media’s attention was riveted on Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel, drawing great focus to some 300 drones and missiles used in the attack, no major deal was made of Israel’s strike on April 1 against the consular segment of Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, that killed a dozen people, including seven Iranian officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In this unprecedented act of aggression against Iranian soil, breaking international diplomatic norms, the Israelis were shielded by the U.S. government at the United Nations Security Council, blocking any condemnation of this act.
Despite an admission from British Foreign Secretary David Cameron that had the UK embassy been attacked similarly, they too would retaliate, the double-standard argument that Iran shouldn’t respond continues to dominate the airways.
This is as Iran’s IRGC has received condemnation for seizing a container ship in the Persian Gulf associated with the Zodiac Maritime shipping company of Israel billionaire Eyal Ofer and his family. In 2021, the Mercer Street oil tanker, which Zodiac Maritime also operated, was struck by Iranian drones, prompting similar condemnation. Yet, little was to be said regarding the Israeli-owned company’s role in collaborating with the Israeli military and intelligence establishment to ferry arms and operatives around the region and carry out assassinations or reconnaissance missions.
However, the Israel-Iran “Shadow War” did not begin with recent events. Israel has been carrying out brutal assassinations of civilian scientists on Iranian soil since 2010 while also carrying out acts of espionage that have endangered innocent civilians in the country.
As early as in the years 2010, 2011 and 2012, Israeli Mossad agents have been planting viruses designed to cause malfunctions in Iranian oil and nuclear power facilities. Another kind of provocative action occurred in 2018, when it was reported that an Israeli Mossad team had raided an archive facility in Tehran, stealing documents that pertained to its nuclear power program.
In 2020, the New York Times and Washington Post reported that Israel planted bombs inside Iran’s Natanz Nuclear facility, which almost caused an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Later that year, the Israeli Mossad assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in Tehran. Then, in April of 2021, another explosion occurred at the Natanz facility, which the New York Times reported was Israel’s doing.
The Israelis have also trained members of the MEK terrorist group to carry out attacks on civilian targets inside Iran. The list of Mossad-linked cells that have been arrested by the Iranian authorities or carried out acts of espionage and sabotage is simply too numerous to cover at length. Early last year, U.S. officials even told Reuters that a suicide drone attack targeting a factory in the city of Isfahan was an Israeli attack.
More recently, in late December, Israel launched airstrikes on Damascus and assassinated IRGC official Seyed Razi Mousavi. And in January, Israel launched airstrikes in Damascus, murdering five Iranian military personnel members and Syrian citizens. Then, in early February, Israel was accused of blowing up gas pipelines in Iran. None of these actions, which would likely illicit a response by most nations, provoked Iran to launch a direct strike on Israel.
In addition to all of this, Israel has been the world’s top cheerleader for the West’s crushing sanctions that have significantly impacted Iran’s civilian population, specifically access to lifesaving medical supplies. AIPAC, the powerful Israeli Lobby group in the United States, worked hard to prevent the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal from passing, then pushed for the Trump administration to unilaterally withdraw before pressuring the Biden administration to refrain from reviving the deal despite this being a campaign promise. Israel even played a role in the Trump administration’s assassination of Iran’s top general tasked with battling ISIS, Qassem Soleimani.
Yet, despite Israel’s long history of documented attacks against Iran and around 30 years of false predictions as to when Iran is supposedly going to develop a nuclear weapon, which is the premise for Western sanctions, the corporate media is still trying to sell the public on the lie that Israel is an innocent victim and that there was no justifiable reason for Iran to retaliate.
They Think We Are Stupid, Volume 8
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | April 23, 2024
Everything you need to know about our ruling class’s opinion of you. As always, these headlines are presented without commentary.
Ukraine, Israel Aid Bill ‘Abomination’ That Will Prolong Suffering – Former US Diplomat
Sputnik – 23.04.2024
WASHINGTON – The $95 billion aid bill that Congress passed on Friday is an “abomination” that will only prolong the suffering caused by the Ukraine war and the Israeli onslaught in the Gaza Strip, former US diplomat and State Department consultant James Carden said on Monday.
“Seems to me the spending bill will only prolong the suffering in Ukraine and Gaza,” Carden said. “The parts of the bill having to do with funding Israel are an abomination and make us even more complicit in their crimes.”
The bill is expected to quickly be approved by the US Senate starting on Tuesday. The measure will provide funds to send Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s regime $60.84 billion, including $23 billion for new US weapons and ammunition; $26 billion to Israel; and another $8.12 billion to the Indo-Pacific region.
“Some of the bill was probably necessary in the sense that the United States needed to ‘restock’ after having wasted so much over the past couple of years,” Carden said.
Close to $30 billion in its provisions will go directly to refill US weapons and ammunition inventories which have been largely emptied over the past two years to primarily arm Ukrainian forces, Carden added.
The bill was approved earlier by 311 votes to 112 in the House of Representatives. No Demcorats voted against the bill and most of them waved Ukrainian flags inside Congress.
New $17Bln Aid to Israel ‘Last Nail in Coffin of US Credibility’ – ex-US Envoy to Riyadh
Sputnik – 23.04.2024
WASHINGTON – The US House of Representatives approval of $17 billion in additional military aid to Israel amid the ongoing war on Gaza demonstrates US disregard for international law and human decency, delivering the final blow to its reputation, former US Ambassador to Riyadh Chas Freeman told Sputnik.
On Saturday, the US House passed legislation to provide $26.38 billion in supplemental appropriation for Israel and Gaza. It includes $17 billion in military aid for Israel and $9 billion for worldwide humanitarian aid, including for civilians in Gaza.
“This puts the last nail in the coffin of US credibility around the world. It makes it clear to everyone beyond a reasonable doubt that the United States has joined Israel in contempt of both international law and human decency,” Freeman, who also served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Clinton administration, said.
The “obscenely massive aid” will enable Israel to continue to carry out “the very genocide in Gaza and the occupied West Bank that the United States hypocritically claims to oppose,” Freeman said.
“Neither Israel nor the United States is likely soon to overcome the international opprobrium generated by their partnership in depravity,” he predicted.
Saturday’s aid package approved more than double the amount of funds also for the Volodymyr Zelensky regime in Ukraine. But it would not avert Kiev’s looming defeat there at the hands of Russia, Freeman cautioned.
“Ukraine’s morale will be boosted by the renewal of financial support from the United States but this will not remedy its problems on the battlefield. It will not create more Ukrainian men with military training. Nor will it supply more artillery shells,” he said.
Along with Israel aid, the US national security supplemental package authorized $60.84 billion for Ukraine, including $23 billion to restore US arsenals of weapons and ammunition, and $8.12 billion for the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan. The package is expected to quickly pass the Senate this week.
Pro-Palestine rallies spread on US campuses despite heavy repression
The Cradle | April 23, 2024
Pro-Palestinian protests at major US universities continued to grow on 22 April despite arrests by police, suspensions by university administrators, and sabotage by pro-Israel lobby groups.
Columbia, a prestigious university in New York City, has been the epicenter of the student protests opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The protests have now spread to other universities, including Harvard, New York University, Yale, Arizona State, and California State Polytechnic University at Humboldt.
Police have arrested dozens at Columbia and Yale for refusing to leave protest encampments after administrators demanded it.
Columbia student and protester Grant Miner told the New Statesman that the protesters’ demands include “amnesty for students who had been suspended by the administration over earlier campus protests [he being one of them]; divestment from Israeli bonds and equity; financial transparency around how the university invests its $14 billion endowment.”
The protests made headlines in the US on Monday as new mass graves were discovered outside Nasser Hospital in Gaza with over 200 civilian bodies, including doctors and nurses still wearing scrubs, as well as women, men, and children, all killed by the Israeli army.
On Monday night, police cleared a protest encampment centered at New York University’s Gould Plaza at the university’s request. Faculty and students were arrested.
The Washington Post reported that videos on social media showed “dozens of officers in tense confrontations with protesters. Some officers tossed tents, and others grappled with demonstrators. Videos also showed police loading people, whose hands were zip-tied behind their backs, onto correctional buses.”
The confrontations began after university police blocked access to the plaza Monday morning, where about 50 protesters were demonstrating “without authorization,” NYU spokesman John Beckman said.
The barriers were breached early in the afternoon by additional protesters, “many of whom we believe were not affiliated with NYU,” who exhibited “disorderly, disruptive, and antagonizing behavior” and refused to leave when told the protests would be disbanded, he said. The university then requested assistance from the [New York Police Department] NYPD, he said, adding there were “several antisemitic incidents reported.”
Last week, over 100 students at Columbia were arrested amid accusations of violence and antisemitism among protesters. NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said: “The students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say.”
According to Grant Miner, a Jewish Columbia student, allegations of antisemitism are unfounded.
“I’m not sure what people would be referring to,” Miner said. “I myself am Jewish. The narrative is that … we’re a violent mob, and there’s been no violence here. The only anti-Jewish sentiments I’ve received are from hard-core Zionist Jews calling me a fake Jew. In fact, I got a fun email to my work email calling me, just a subject line, ‘Judenrat.’”
Journalist Max Blumenthal reported that pro-Israel lobby groups are offering “cash compensation” to young Zionists “willing to wear keffiyehs and walk in these demonstrations” as provocateurs to spread antisemitic slogans and issue threats against Jews.
On Monday, Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley used alleged concerns about the safety of Jewish students to demand that President Joe Biden call in the National Guard to suppress the protests at Columbia.
Google fires more employees protesting giant deal with Israel
Press TV – April 23, 2024
Google has fired about 20 more employees over recent protests against a deal between the US technology giant and Israel.
The activist group No Tech for Apartheid said on Monday that the new layoffs bring to more than 50 the total number of Google workers dismissed in the past week.
“The corporation is attempting to quash dissent, silence its workers and reassert its power over them,” said Jane Chung, a spokesperson for No Tech for Apartheid.
Meanwhile, a Google spokesperson confirmed the company had sacked more employees after continuing its investigation into the April 16 anti-Israel demonstrations, which included sit-ins at offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California.
The protesters held posters reading, “No More Genocide For Profit,” “No cloud apartheid,” “We Stand with Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Googlers” and “Don’t be evil, stop retaliation”.
They denounced Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract awarded to Google and Amazon to supply the Israeli regime with cloud computing services.
The contract dates back to 2021. However, the protests followed a report in Time magazine earlier this month, citing an internal company document, that the Israeli ministry of military affairs is a Google Cloud customer.
No Tech for Apartheid said the report showed that Google had “built custom tools” for the Israeli ministry of military affairs and had “doubled down on contracting” with the regime’s army after the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip began.
Israel waged its brutal war on the besieged Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 34,183 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 77,143 others.
Since the start of the onslaught, the US, Israel’s most dedicated ally, has fast-tracked arms shipments to the occupying regime and blocked UN resolutions that called for a Gaza truce.
EU will be the biggest loser if it confiscates assets – Moscow
RT | April 23, 2024
Moscow has drafted a package of retaliatory measures in the event that Western countries seize Russian sovereign assets that have been frozen over the Ukraine conflict, senior senator Valentina Matvienko warned on Tuesday.
In an interview with Russian journalist Dmitry Kiselyov, the chairwoman of the Federation Council said that the EU’s potential move to confiscate Russian assets would be “unprecedented,” adding that it “would destroy the global economy.”
“Of course, it would be absolutely illegal, and everyone in Europe understands that they can’t do that,” the official stated.
The West has frozen around $300 billion in Russian central bank assets since the start of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Most of the funds are being held in the EU. Moscow has repeatedly denounced the seizure as “theft.”
Officials in several Western nations, notably the US and the UK, have insisted on the outright confiscation of Russian assets despite widespread concerns that this would have no legal basis. In contrast, the EU has been reluctant to do so, reportedly fearing Russian retaliation.
Matvienko stressed that Russia has “a prepared response” to a potential confiscation. “We have a bill that we are ready to consider immediately in response. And the Europeans will lose more than we will. Of course, they are afraid of this, especially given that their economy is collapsing.”
The senator argued that Washington has crushed the EU, both politically and economically. “In the defense and security area, it used to be a vassal… but now it has been simply squashed by the Americans. They now want to strangle it even more… to make it even less competitive,” she stated.
With this in mind, Matvienko suggested that the European business community should vehemently protest against the potential seizures, as they would be the primary target of Moscow’s retaliatory measures.
While the EU has been dragging its feet on confiscating Russian assets, it has been working on a plan to seize the profits generated by those funds in order to procure weapons for Ukraine and boost its defense production capabilities.
According to Politico, however, some members of the bloc have voiced serious misgivings about the initiative. Hungary and Slovakia have opposed the idea of sending weapons to Ukraine, while Malta and Luxembourg are reportedly unhappy that they were not consulted about the plan.
Sponsor of TikTok Ban & Iran-Palestine Sanctions Gets 1,400% Bump in AIPAC Donations
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 22.04.2024
The 21st Century Peace through Strength Act passed the US House of Representatives on Saturday, as part of a package of bills that also included military aid to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific.
US Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who sponsored the 21st Century Peace through Strength Act that passed the US House of Representatives, saw contributions to his campaign from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) increase an incredible 1,413% during the 2024 election cycle when compared to the 2022 cycle.
The 21st Century Peace through Strength Act includes the REPO Act, which enables Biden to seize Russian assets frozen in US banks and send them to Ukraine, a provision that will essentially ban TikTok from the US, and also contains sanctions against Palestinian resistance groups.
According to a statement released by McCaul when the bill was introduced, it will be “the most comprehensive sanctions against Iran [that] Congress has passed in years.” The legislation is expected to clear the Senate and be signed into law by US President Joe Biden this week.
While it is unclear if, how, or why AIPAC would push for the theft of Russian assets, the other major provisions of the bill are directly related to issues AIPAC and other pro-Israeli lobbying groups advocate for.
The sanction provisions of the bill are self-evidently pro-Israel actions, designed explicitly to harm Israel’s adversaries in the region. The TikTok ban is slightly obscured, but the app has been blamed by politicians and Jewish groups alike for the rise in support among young people for the Palestinian cause.
In late October, US Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called the app a “purveyor of virulent antisemitic lies,” on Twitter.
Billionaire Bill Ackman, one of Israel’s most virulent supporters who gained infamy last year after publicly doxing Ivy League students who made pro-Palestinian statements, blamed the app directly for the support of Palestine among America’s youth. “TikTok is massively manipulating public opinion,” he wrote.
“Compare the generational differences on support for Hamas. 51% of the TikTok generation say that Hamas’ barbaric acts are justified,” Ackman wrote on Twitter/X while saying TikTok should “probably” be banned.
Ackman’s sentiments were reflected by McCaul himself in November, when he, too, blamed TikTok and China specifically for young people turning against Israel’s actions in Gaza.
“China controls the algorithms on TikTok, so if you type in Israel or Palestine you are going to get a lot of pro-Palestinian, Hamas material and videos pop up and that’s primarily the source of education for our young people,” claimed McCaul.
It is not just politicians blaming TikTok for the rise in support for Palestinians, Jewish groups have as well.
In December, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt blamed TikTok for “intensifying antisemitism” and anti-Zionism.
“TikTok, if you will, is the 24/7 news channel of so many of our young people and it’s like Al Jazeera on steroids, amplifying and intensifying the antisemitism and the anti-Zion[ism] with no repercussions,” Greenblatt claimed on American television.
For years, McCaul was a non-entity for pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC. Elected in 2004, McCaul received no contributions from pro-Israel groups until the 2020 cycle when another group, Pro-Israel America PAC contributed $32,600 to his campaign, his largest donor that year, according to Open Secrets.
The next cycle, McCaul received $7,900 from AIPAC itself in addition to another $6,000 from other pro-Israel groups. But, it was not until this year that McCaul became the Republican darling for AIPAC in the House of Representatives.
To date, McCaul has received $119,550 from AIPAC in 2024 alone, a 1,413% increase and by far his largest contributor, dwarfing the second place Axxess Technology Solutions which donated $16,600.
Open Secrets lists the “pro-Israel industry,” including AIPAC, as having contributed $372,468 to McCaul’s campaign overall in 2024, a 681% increase from the $47,673 in contributions he received from the “pro-Israel industry” in 2022.
This cycle, McCaul is AIPAC’s top Republican recipient in the House and is the sixth overall House recipient of AIPAC funds. Only Democratic Reps. Ritchie Torres (NY), Hakeem Jeffries (NY), Kathy Manning (NC), Josh Gottheimer (NJ) and Pete Aguilar (CA) sit above McCaul on the list. All of them voted for the bill.
Of the bill’s 10 co-sponsors, all Republicans, four of them list AIPAC as their top contributor for this year: Reps. Joe Wilson (SC), Mark Green (TN), Doug Lamborn (CO), and Dan Crenshaw (TX). Another co-sponsor, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA) lists AIPAC as his second-largest contributor. Only Delegate Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen from American Samoa, who does not have voting rights in the House, and US Rep. Maria Salazar (FL) co-sponsored the bill without taking campaign contributions from AIPAC or any other pro-Israel group.
Sputnik emailed McCaul’s campaign for comment on the increase in AIPAC contributions, but did not receive a response by press time.
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From the Archives
The great ADHD swindle
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
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