In a fascinating exchange US Rep. Matt Gaetz probed US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about the role of the estimated 1,000 US troops involved in building a floating pier to deliver aid to Gaza. Austin insisted that they were not “boots on the ground” although he admitted they would be armed and would respond to incoming fire. Injecting US troops into a warzone requires a Congressional vote, Gaetz warned Austin.
Tag: israel
Campus Protests: The Kids May Not Be Alright, But They Are (Mostly) Right
I’m too young to remember the campus convulsions of the 1960s, but older friends who were there tell me that the growing campus protest movement against US support for Israel’s war in Palestine bears a striking resemblance to those days.
I happen to support that movement’s goals, at least to the extent of wanting to see the US government butt out of other people’s arguments.
I’m told by some “pro-Israel” friends that the student protesters are all “anti-semites” and “supporters of Hamas,” and that if I support them I must also hate a particular ethnic group and support terrorism as a tactic.
But I don’t hate any ethnic groups, nor do I support Hamas any more than I support the Israeli Defense Forces.
I don’t doubt that SOME of the student protesters fall into the “hater” category, simply because the protests are a convenient bandwagon for “haters” to ride on. The next large political event I attend that doesn’t have a least a few weirdos hanging around, trying to grab a little unearned credibility by association, will be the first.
I just want a government that claims it works for me to stop handing out weapons and cash to other governments. Especially, though not only, to crybully regimes that constantly play the victim while also occupying territory outside their borders for decades on end, imposing apartheid regimes on the inhabitants of those occupied territories, murdering anyone who resists (along with many who don’t), etc.
To the extent that the kids on campus are seeking the same thing, they’re doing God’s work and have my full support.
Biden Considering Bringing Some Refugees From Gaza To The US
The Biden administration appears to have gotten its Soros marching orders to pour gasoline into the fire, with CBS reporting that the White House is considering bringing “certain Palestinians” to the U.S. as refugees, a move that would offer a permanent safe haven to some of those fleeing war-torn Gaza, and would also drastically escalate what has already been the 2024 equivalent of the 2020 BLM summer of violence, only this time with spoiled, rich Marxist kids pretending they live in the 1960s and their actions can stop the war in Vietnam Middle East.
According to the report, in recent weeks senior officials across several federal U.S. agencies have discussed the practicality of different options to resettle Palestinians from Gaza who have immediate family members who are American citizens or permanent residents.
One of those proposals involves using the decades-old United States Refugee Admissions Program to welcome Palestinians with U.S. ties who have managed to escape Gaza and enter neighboring Egypt, according to the inter-agency planning documents.
Top U.S. officials have also discussed getting additional Palestinians out of Gaza and processing them as refugees if they have American relatives, the documents show. The plans would require coordination with Egypt, which has so far refused to welcome large numbers of people from Gaza.
Those who pass a series of eligibility, medical and security screenings would qualify to fly to the U.S. with refugee status, which offers beneficiaries permanent residency, resettlement benefits like housing assistance and a path to American citizenship.
While the eligible population is expected to be relatively small, the plans being discussed by U.S. officials could offer a lifeline to some Palestinians fleeing the Israel-Hamas war, which local public health authorities say has claimed the lives of more than 34,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians in Gaza.
Needless to say, this comes from the same admin which a few days ago decided against a ban of menthol cigarettes over fears it would alienate the black vote, and today targeted the pot-smoking voters with a report the DEA was preparing to reclassify marijuana to a less dangerous drug category. The same admin which in the past 2 years has welcomed over 20 million illegals with the hope that they will illegally vote for Biden and the Democrats, and thus enshrine the current kleptofascist regime in perpetuity. So it is hardly a surprise that Biden, desperate to avoid losing the vote of the ultra-left progressive wing of the Democrat party which just happens to sympathize with Hamas, will pander to this group whose votes may end up deciding the November election.
Jamaal Bowman ‘Fully’ in Favor of Resettling Gaza Migrants in U.S.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) expressed his full “support” for the United States to “bring in” Palestinian refugees from Gaza.
During an interview with a reporter from Yonkers Voice, Bowman said the U.S. is a “land of immigrants” and “asylum seekers” that has always opened its “doors to immigrants,” saying, “[I] fully support that,” in response to a question regarding the U.S. opening its doors to migrants from Gaza.
“Should the United States bring in people from Gaza?” the reporter asked Bowman.
“We are a land of migrants, and we are a land of asylum seekers — anyone escaping persecution and oppression and violence — the United States has always been an open home to those people,” Bowman answered:
So, whether they’re coming from Palestine, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, [or] Haiti, they’re coming here to contribute to our economy, which 99.9 percent of them are. We’ve always been a place to open our doors to immigrants coming here, so, yeah, [I] fully support that.
Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming…
Student action on university campuses against US involvement in Israel’s slaughter of Gaza has exploded across the country. Suddenly there is the distinct feel in the air of the anti-Vietnam war protests once they finally caught on in 1968 and soon thereafter changed the course of US history.
Both protest movements were fully demonized by the same forces of the mainstream Left/Right regime and what libertarian writer Jacob Hornberger rightly calls the “National Security State.” I would add the mainstream media from Fox to MSNBC. But these days there is relatively more freedom of expression available to Americans via some of the social media outlets. The US government war on one of these outlets – TikTok – may also be fueling protests, as this outlet is particularly popular among younger Americans and has become the platform for them to hear more objective and independent views on what is happening in Gaza. It should not be considered a coincidence that not long after Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblat was caught on tape panicking over the shift in opinion away from fealty to Israel among the younger generation, a big PR operation about “Chinese infiltration” of the platform emerged as did calls to ban the popular application.
“We have a major, major, major generational (TikTok) problem,” Greenblat said. This past week both Houses of Congress voted to ban TikTok. Problem solved? Not exactly.
So back to the protests.
Tens of thousands of students from New York’s Columbia University to the University of Southern California have risen up to demand an end to US support for Israel’s 200 day – and counting – total demolition of Gaza in retribution for the October 7th Hamas bloody incursion into Israeli territory.
To date, more than 35,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been killed including an estimated 15,000 children. Hamas, by contrast, is reportedly not significantly degraded and its massive tunnel system remains intact. Former Israeli Defense Forces General Yitzhak Brick told Israeli newspaper Maariv that Israel has already lost the war against Hamas and must admit it.
Leaked USAID Document Concludes Israel Impeded Gaza Aid
Officials at the United States Agency for International Development concluded in a confidential memo to Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel is violating a White House directive by blocking humanitarian aid from entering the besieged Gaza Strip during its ongoing genocidal assault on the Palestinian enclave, according to a report published Friday.
Devex‘s Colum Lynch reported that the confidential communication – entitled Famine Inevitable, Changes Could Reduce But Not Stop Widespread Civilian Deaths – states that USAID “assesses the government of Israel (GOI) does not currently demonstrate necessary compliance” with a February 8 White House memo requiring the secretary of state to obtain assurances from governments receiving U.S. military aid that such assistance is used in compliance with human rights law.
The USAID memo raises “serious concerns that the killing of nearly 32,000 people, of which the GOI itself assesses roughly two-thirds are civilians, may well amount to a violation of the international humanitarian law.” That figure is now over 34,300 deaths, with at least 77,293 people injured and over 11,000 others missing and presumed buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings.
Crackdowns on Protests Are Exposing Higher Ed’s Complicity in Israel’s Genocide
As the Palestinian death toll in Gaza and the West Bank mounts daily, campus protests against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza continue to spread across the U.S., where students and faculty often face police crackdowns. Student activists from Pomona Divest from Apartheid in southern California, The Coalition for Mutual Liberation at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and Resist WashU in St. Louis, Missouri, told Truthout the blows landing hardest are the ones from their own chancellors and deans. The activists say university administrators are waging an asymmetrical campaign of enforcement against students demanding an end to their schools’ complicity in the slaughter of Palestinians.
“We see Pomona for what it is: serving capital and empire. And we know the way to win our demands is to disrupt their flow of cash, disrupt their reputation,” said Amanda Dym, a 21-year-old humanities student at Scripps College, one of the five colleges in the Pomona consortium. “We won’t allow our administrators who facilitate and defend investments in an apartheid state to go about their work undisturbed.”
Dym was among 20 students arrested by cops in riot gear during a sit-in outside Pomona President G. Gabrielle Starr’s office on April 5.
“A televised genocide live-streamed on our phones is obviously unlike anything that’s happened in our lifetimes,” she said. That’s why Dym and others were moved to demonstrate, but she says when Starr called in the riot police, the president put them in a whole other category of risk.
“Obviously, it was a scary day, to watch 30-plus riot cops from three cities come in and start bringing my comrades out, one by one,” Dym told Truthout. “The cops were in full gear with automatic weapons, bigger guns than some of us had ever seen. They were yanking students up off the ground, zip-tying their hands so tightly they were losing circulation.”
College Activists Postpone Anti-Israel Encampment Because Students Are Too White
Students at the University of Washington postponed an anti-Israel demonstration planned for Thursday because too many of the students who signed up are white.
According to MyNorthwest, a Washington-based radio station, the University of Washington’s Progressive Student Union (UWPSU) opted to delay an encampment in solidarity with Palestinian terrorists “to make sure this encampment is a better reflection of the UW community, and having even greater unity with Muslim, Palestinian and Arab students.”
“We want to be part of a much larger coalition of groups and make no mistake, WE WILL HAVE A UW ENCAMPMENT! We want to make sure everyone’s voice is included and this action is as safe, secure, and strong as possible,” read a statement from the far-left student union published by MyNorthwest.
News of Mass Graves Isn’t Much News to US Outlets
The bodies of over 300 people were discovered in a mass grave at the Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis, a Gaza city besieged by Israeli forces. The discovery of these Palestinian bodies, many of which were reportedly bound and stripped, is more evidence of “plausible” genocide committed by Israel during its bombardment of Gaza. Over 34,000 Palestinians have died thus far, with more than two-thirds of the casualties being women and children (Al Jazeera, 4/21/24).
Yet this discovery prompted few US news headlines, despite outlets like the Guardian (4/23/24), Haaretz (4/23/24) and Reuters (4/23/24) covering the story. Instead, headlines relating to Palestine have predominantly focused on protests happening at university campuses across the country—an important story, but not one that ought to drown out coverage of the atrocities students are protesting against.
Israel’s Haaretz noted that
emergency workers in white hazmat suits had been seen digging near the ruins of Nasser Hospital. They reportedly dug corpses out of the ground with hand tools and a digger truck. The emergency services said 73 more bodies had been found at the site in the past day, raising the number found over the week to 283.
The bodies included people killed during the Israeli siege of Khan Yunis, as well as people killed after Israel occupied the medical complex in February (Guardian, 4/22/24). They were found under piles of waste, with several bodies having their hands tied and clothes stripped off (UN, 4/23/24; Democracy Now!, 4/25/24). Similar mass graves, containing at least 381 bodies, were found at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital after Israel withdrew from occupying that complex on April 1 (CNN, 4/9/24).
The discovery of these mass graves “horrified” UN rights chief Volker Turk (Reuters, 4/23/24). But it has yet to prompt so strong a reaction from several major US news outlets.
I was banned from Elon’s ‘free speech’ X app for offending power
Following years of pressure from Israel lobbyists and British spooks, I was finally banned by Twitter/X. What does my removal say about Elon Musk, who flaunts his opposition to censorship, while promising to build an “everything app” where you could lose access to banking and messaging for violating dubious speech codes?
On February 17, I was suspended from Twitter/X without warning. The cause was mass-reporting by Zionist activists I’d offended. My removal was justified on the basis that I violated X’s “rules against violent speech.” Having endlessly condemned violence on the platform – in particular, the Gaza genocide – I’m flummoxed. Not least because a post from one of my Zionist detractors, which openly calls for me to be “battered on a weekly basis” over my political views, remains extant today.
Despite repeated requests for clarity from X, I have no idea whether I will ever be reinstated. In February, I received from “support” stating the suspension will only be reversed after three months. But just a few sentences later, the email contradicted itself, stating in closing that the ban would last just a month. Meanwhile, whenever I log into X, my profile appears to have zero followers or follows, I cannot view or search anyone’s tweets (including my own), and my DMs are inaccessible. Have they been erased? A landing page message reads:
“Your account is permanently in read-only mode, which means you can’t post, repost, or like content. You won’t be able to create new accounts.”
In January 2024, X purged a number of prominent, predominantly left-wing users without warning or explanation. Their suspensions were lifted only after a deluge of complaints poured in to the personal account of Elon Musk, the libertarian tech maven and self-proclaimed free speech warrior who purchased Twitter with his personal fortune.
I am grateful that scores of X users have done the same following my own suspension. However, Musk has kept mum about my case. While I may not have as many followers as those abruptly defenestrated in January, my work has been widely shared on X, with some posts gaining millions of impressions. Most-viewed was my December 2023 revelation that an unadvertised and unnoticed Russian government plane was parked in Washington DC’s Dulles airport, a visit which likely represented the beginning of the Ukraine proxy war’s end.
Hellbound and Down 
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