In super-exciting news, the people who have unwaveringly backed Israel’s genocide from the start have proven they’re on the right side of history by sending masked cops to arrest students and professors who were committing the terrorist act of peaceful protest. Obviously, brutal crackdowns on academia are only bad when Iran or China do them, and in this case, should be applauded.
If you’re unclear why this is happening, Benjamin Netanyahu made a totally sane speech demanding the US crack down on peaceful protests that he doesn’t like. Netanyahu’s request came just days after Israel told the US to stop meddling in its internal affairs.
Personally, I think it’s brilliant the US constitution only applies until the president of a foreign country with a powerful lobbying group decides it’s inconvenient. At that point, you can shove your first amendment up your ass (that’s American for arse).
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Not long ago, universities were talking about how important free speech on campus is, even if it’s speech normal people dislike. Emory University in Atlanta ignored those free speech values because they were intended to ensure Ben Shapiro would not be cancelled before he could explain why he hated the Barbie movie so much. Now that Ben has had his rant, free speech doesn’t matter any more.
Emory University sent armed enforcers into campus to fire rubber bullets and tear gas at the scariest people in America. The decision presumably had the approval of the US president who had spent the week smearing the protesters as anti-Semites. This is the standard tactic to delegitimise critics of Israel. I understand the president is now considering whether to stand by his original position or pretend he was on the students’ side all along. Given he tried to shake hands with a ghost recently, anything is possible with this man.
Among Emory’s targets was Noelle McAfee, chair of the university's philosophy department, who armed cops heroically captured without taking casualties. Honestly, these men are as brave as the IDF soldiers who try on women’s underwear before setting their houses on fire. Footage clearly showed the unarmed, middle-aged white woman being cuffed by a masked man was Hamas.
You will be relieved to hear three super-brave cops felt the need to tase a student who they had pinned down and cuffed. They then knelt on his back. Ordinarily, they would have knelt on his throat, but they wanted to show restraint to make it clear they’re the good guys. If you know anything about history, you know cops who are violent towards students protesting war are always on the right side of it.
A total of 93 thought criminals were taken hostage at the Emory crackdown, presumably to be re-educated in room 101. Reassuringly, many of the hostages were taken away in unmarked vans so no one has a clue what is happening to them. Basically, they’re getting the Palestine treatment, but we in the media will ignore it because they’re all terrorists or something.
Other universities across the US have also taken their fair share of hostages. It’s hoped that mass arrests, along with the TikTok ban, will endear young people to Israel and help them realise genocide is just as woke as they are. If not, their lives will be destroyed because it’s only what they deserve.
Any students or professors who have evaded capture can stop being smug because Israelis say they will use facial recognition technology to ensure they are unemployable, which I’m sure you will agree, is a brilliant justification for the existence of facial recognition technology. I bet you’re super-comfortable with cameras scanning your face without your consent now, aren’t you? Israel’s sack-anyone-who-disagrees-with-us machine is about to get at least 1000% more efficient. What do you mean this sounds like one of those terrifying dystopias science-fiction warned us about? All you have to do is comply with the death cult and it will spare you The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
Re: American university students arrested for embarrassing Israel
They are desperately trying to keep a lid on this story but it's getting pretty huge. It's another example of their hypocrisy being exposed in an undeniable way; so much for all their bleating about free speech, first amendment rights and all the rest of it.
Added to that the threats coming from various apartheid state aparatchiks (tweeting about how they will dox the students and ruin their future job prospects, etc.) make it fairly obvious that a lot of this action is being encouraged, if not requested, by a foreign state.
I think they are starting to realise they are losing control of this narrative and opposition to the repression and murder of the Palestinians has become so widespread that they (the power elite) are looking increasingly out of touch and can't try and pull the friend of the people bullshit anymore.
Emory is the latest one to have the pigs descend on it:
Texas led the way of course with the National Guard steaming in to everyone like it was smash a hippy time again.
It really is disgusting to watch. Land of the free my fucking arse....no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
and next time they dare talk about how women are oppressed in some place they want to bomb
...no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
Re: and next time they dare talk about how women are oppressed in some place they want to bomb
Are you sure that ordinary people are going to be impressed when a wealthy, white American complains that she's "a professor" when the filth treat her like a pleb?The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
Re: and next time they dare talk about how women are oppressed in some place they want to bomb
But I'm sure something there will not have sufficient class rigour.
...no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
https://twitter.com/PatrickQuinnTV/status/1783532600637681964...no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
Re: and next time they dare talk about how women are oppressed in some place they want to bomb
Arguably, working people (and students) may appreciate that a relatively privileged person has made sacrifices in solidarity, though I do agree it is no worse than the way many working people are treated.
“I’m a professor!” Was certainly a naive thing to say. “I’m not a professor!” is almost invariably a safer thing to say, particularly in the deep south.
And yes, in case it needs to be said (probably not), the deep south is still the deep south.
USA! USA! USA!...no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
Achinthya Sivalingam, a graduate student in Public Affairs at Princeton University did not know when she woke up this morning that shortly after 7 a.m. she would join hundreds of students across the country who have been arrested, evicted and banned from campus for protesting the genocide in Gaza.
She wears a blue sweatshirt, sometimes fighting back tears, when I speak to her. We are seated at a small table in the Small World Coffee shop on Witherspoon Street, half a block away from the university she can no longer enter, from the apartment she can no longer live in and from the campus where in a few weeks she was scheduled to graduate.
She wonders where she will spend the night.
The police gave her five minutes to collect items from her apartment.
“I grabbed really random things,” she says. “I grabbed oatmeal for whatever reason. I was really confused.”
Student protesters across the country exhibit a moral and physical courage — many are facing suspension and expulsion — that shames every major institution in the country. They are dangerous not because they disrupt campus life or engage in attacks on Jewish students — many of those protesting are Jewish — but because they expose the abject failure by the ruling elites and their institutions to halt genocide, the crime of crimes.
These students watch, like most of us, Israel’s live-streamed slaughter of the Palestinian people. But unlike most of us, they act. Their voices and protests are a potent counterpoint to the moral bankruptcy that surrounds them.
Not one university president has denounced Israel’s destruction of every university in Gaza. Not one university president has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Not one university president has used the words “apartheid” or “genocide.” Not one university president has called for sanctions and divestment from Israel.
Instead, heads of these academic institutions grovel supinely before wealthy donors, corporations — including weapons manufacturers — and rabid right-wing politicians. They reframe the debate around harm to Jews rather than the daily slaughter of Palestinians, including thousands of children.
They have allowed the abusers — the Zionist state and its supporters — to paint themselves as victims. This false narrative, which focuses on anti-Semitism, allows the centers of power, including the media, to block out the real issue — genocide. It contaminates the debate. It is a classic case of “reactive abuse.” Raise your voice to decry injustice, react to prolonged abuse, attempt to resist, and the abuser suddenly transforms themself into the aggrieved.
Princeton University, like other universities across the country, is determined to halt encampments calling for an end to the genocide. This, it appears, is a coordinated effort by universities across the country.
The encampment at George Washington University in Washington D.C. (Joe Lauria)
The university knew about the proposed encampment in advance. When the students reached the five staging sites this morning, they were met by large numbers from the university’s Department of Public Safety and the Princeton Police Department.
The site of the proposed encampment in front of Firestone Library was filled with police. This is despite the fact that students kept their plans off of university emails and confined to what they thought were secure apps. Standing among the police this morning was Rabbi Eitan Webb, who founded and heads Princeton’s Chabad House. He has attended university events to vocally attack those who call for an end to the genocide as anti-semites, according to student activists.
As the some 100 protesters listened to speakers, a helicopter circled noisily overhead. A banner, hanging from a tree, read: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.”
The students said they would continue their protest until Princeton divests from firms that “profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s ongoing military campaign” in Gaza, ends university research “on weapons of war” funded by the Department of Defense, enacts an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions, supports Palestinian academic and cultural institutions and advocates for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
But if the students again attempt to erect tents – they took down 14 tents once the two arrests were made this morning – it seems certain they will all be arrested.
“It is far beyond what I expected to happen,” says Aditi Rao, a doctoral student in classics. “They started arresting people seven minutes into the encampment.”
Statue of George Washington draped in Palestinian flag at protest on Thursday at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. (Joe Lauria)
A Threat
Princeton Vice President of Campus Life Rochelle Calhoun sent out a mass email on Wednesday warning students they could be arrested and thrown off campus if they erected an encampment.
“Any individual involved in an encampment, occupation, or other unlawful disruptive conduct who refuses to stop after a warning will be arrested and immediately barred from campus,” she wrote. “For students, such exclusion from campus would jeopardize their ability to complete the semester.”
These students, she added, could be suspended or expelled.
Sivalingam ran into one of her professors and pleaded with him for faculty support for the protest. He informed her he was coming up for tenure and could not participate. The course he teaches is called “Ecological Marxism.”
“It was a bizarre moment,” she says. “I spent last semester thinking about ideas and evolution and civil change, like social change. It was a crazy moment.”
She starts to cry.
A few minutes after 7 a.m, police distributed a leaflet to the students erecting tents with the headline “Princeton University Warning and No Trespass Notice.” The leaflet stated that the students were “engaged in conduct on Princeton University property that violates University rules and regulations, poses a threat to the safety and property of others, and disrupts the regular operations of the University: such conduct includes participating in an encampment and/or disrupting a University event.” The leaflet said those who engaged in the “prohibited conduct” would be considered a “Defiant Trespasser under New Jersey criminal law (N.J.S.A. 2C:18-3) and subject to immediate arrest.”
A few seconds later Sivalingam heard a police officer say “Get those two.”
Hassan Sayed, a doctoral student in economics who is of Pakistani descent, was working with Sivalingam to erect one of tents. He was handcuffed. Sivalingam was zip tied so tightly it cut off circulation to her hands. There are dark bruises circling her wrists.
“There was an initial warning from cops about ‘You are trespassing’ or something like that, ‘This is your first warning,’” Sayed says. “It was kind of loud. I didn’t hear too much. Suddenly, hands were thrust behind my back. As this happened, my right arm tensed a bit and they said ‘You are resisting arrest if you do that.’ They put the handcuffs on.”
He was asked by one of the arresting officers if he was a student. When he said he was, they immediately informed him that he was banned from campus.
“No mention of what charges are as far as I could hear,” he says. “I get taken to one car. They pat me down a bit. They ask for my student ID.”
Sayed was placed in the back of a campus police car with Sivalingam, who was in agony from the zip ties. He asked the police to loosen the zip ties on Sivalingam, a process that took several minutes as they had to remove her from the vehicle and the scissors were unable to cut through the plastic. They had to find wire cutters. They were taken to the university’s police station.
Sayed was stripped of his phone, keys, clothes, backpack and AirPods and placed in a holding cell. No one read him his Miranda rights.
He was again told he was banned from the campus.
“Is this an eviction?” he asked the campus police.
The police did not answer.
He asked to call a lawyer. He was told he could call a lawyer when the police were ready.
“They may have mentioned something about trespassing but I don’t remember clearly,” he says. “It certainly was not made salient to me.”
He was told to fill out forms about his mental health and if he was on medication. Then he was informed he was being charged with “defiant trespassing.”
“I say, ‘I’m a student, how is that trespassing? I attend school here,’” he says. “They really don’t seem to have a good answer. I reiterate, asking whether me being banned from campus constitutes eviction, because I live on campus. They just say, ‘ban from campus.’ I said something like that doesn’t answer the question. They say it will all be explained in the letter. I’m like, ‘Who is writing the letter?’ ‘Dean of grad school’ they respond.”
Sayed was driven to his campus housing. The campus police did not let him have his keys. He was given a few minutes to grab items like his phone charger. They locked his apartment door. He, too, is seeking shelter in the Small World Coffee shop.
Sivalingam often returned to Tamil Nadu in southern India, where she was born, for her summer vacations. The poverty and daily struggle of those around her, to survive, she says, was “sobering.”
“The disparity of my life and theirs, how to reconcile how those things exist in the same world,” she says, her voice quivering with emotion. “It was always very bizarre to me. I think that’s where a lot of my interest in addressing inequality, in being able to think about people outside of the United States as humans, as people who deserve lives and dignity, comes from.”
She must adjust now to being exiled from campus.
“I gotta find somewhere to sleep,” she says, “tell my parents, but that’s going to be a little bit of a conversation, and find ways to engage in jail support and communications because I can’t be there, but I can continue to mobilize.”
There are many shameful periods in American history. The genocide we carried out against indigenous peoples. Slavery. The violent suppression of the labor movement that saw hundreds of workers killed. Lynching. Jim and Jane Crow. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya.
The genocide in Gaza, which we fund and support, is of such monstrous proportions that it will achieve a prominent place in this pantheon of crimes.
History will not be kind to most of us. But it will bless and revere these students.
Excellent;thanks. There aren't many that match Chris Hedges when it comes to nailing injustice:
Not one university president has denounced Israel’s destruction of every university in Gaza. Not one university president has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Not one university president has used the words “apartheid” or “genocide.” Not one university president has called for sanctions and divestment from Israel.
Instead, heads of these academic institutions grovel supinely before wealthy donors, corporations — including weapons manufacturers — and rabid right-wing politicians. They reframe the debate around harm to Jews rather than the daily slaughter of Palestinians, including thousands of children.
They have allowed the abusers — the Zionist state and its supporters — to paint themselves as victims. This false narrative, which focuses on anti-Semitism, allows the centers of power, including the media, to block out the real issue — genocide. It contaminates the debate. It is a classic case of “reactive abuse.” Raise your voice to decry injustice, react to prolonged abuse, attempt to resist, and the abuser suddenly transforms themself into the aggrieved.
Not for nothing are their Unis known as "hedgefunds with an educational component"....no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
on April 26, 2024, 10:27 am