Tag: protests

University of California Rolls Out New Free Speech Policies To Curtail Pro-Palestine Protests on Campus

The term ‘Orwellian’ is rapidly losing its gravitas with how often we make recourse to it in trying to explain global society’s piecemeal tumble into neofascism (same as the old fascism), but a recent batch of policy changes at the University of California, Los Angeles, rolling out this fall in retaliation for students and faculty’s pro-Palestine, anti-genocide protests last spring, truly deserves the epithet.

Reeling in the wake of frequent anti-genocide protests, rallies, and marches last year, the occupation of Royce Quad by a pro-Palestine student encampment in April, and three major graduate student strikes since 2019 (this one, which was at UC Santa Cruz but threatened credibly to spread to UCLA, this one, and the most recent one), UCLA administration is scrambling to enact new campus-wide policies aimed at preventing student movements, activism, protests, and other forms of free expression and free association from taking place on campus, which is public land owned by the State of California.

The most desperate change takes the form of sweeping updates to the (also Orwellian-sounding) Time, Place, and Manner Policies, reported on today by the student paper, the Daily Bruin. Under the new regulations, campus administration redefines “​​publicly accessible spaces” (on a publicly-owned campus on public land with no gates or physical barriers to entry from the street) to include just two locations: a thin strip of walkway known as Bruinwalk, colloquially known by some as “the gauntlet” of leafletters, solicitors, canvassers, and undergraduate clubs seeking to boost their membership; and the area outside Murphy Hall, the main administrative building on campus. According to Daily Bruin, “Separate rules exist for events that receive administration approval 10 days in advance,” such as marches, rallies, and using a megaphone. Other heinous acts that students are no longer allowed to commit include ordering food delivery between midnight and 6a.m., walking outside during the same timeframe, and refusing to identify oneself to campus staff.

Next, a new, ironically stupid “Workplace Violence Prevention Plan” that is to be imposed on all campus employees this fall could have been in the works since before the pro-Palestine spring uprising, but the timing of its release is at best pure bureaucratic tone deafness and at worst another mechanism designed to clamp down on freedom of speech and association on campus. This is especially true because in the legal code to which it refers, ‘violence’ is defined broadly to include threats that result in ‘psychological trauma’. No matter what the boomers say, mental trauma is a genuine form of harm, so there is no issue there. The problem here, as with many of the University of California’s reactionary new policies, lies in the potential for – the likelihood of – selective enforcement. Furthermore, the concept of psychological harm was weaponized by Zionist counterprotesters last spring, led by their on-campus posterboy, who actively antagonized peaceful anti-genocide protesters and then was quoted in this Times of Israel article saying the encampment made him feel ‘not safe’.

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American Citizen Fatally Shot by IDF Soldier During Pro-Palestine Protest in West Bank

US citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was fatally shot by IDF soldiers during a pro-Palestinian protest that took place near Nabulus in the northern West Bank on Friday.

According to AP News, protests started out as peaceful, but turned violent when activists began throwing stones at Israeli Defense Force soldiers, prompting them to fire live ammunition into the crowd.

One of the IDF bullets tragically struck Eygi in the head, killing her on site.

From AP News:

“The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an ‘instigator of violent activity’ in the area of the protest.

The killing came amid a surge of violence in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, with increasing Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis, attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and heavier military crackdowns on Palestinian protests. More than 690 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials.”

Biden State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller confirmed that the U.S. government was aware of the death in statements he made on Friday.

“We offer our deepest condolences to her family and loved ones,” he said. “We are urgently gathering more information about the circumstances of her death, and will have more to say as we learn more.”

The White House also responded to the reports stating it was “deeply disturbed” by the death while urging the IDF to open an investigation into the incident.

Another activist who was at the protest told reporters that there were “two separate shots of live ammunition,” that were fired by officers into the crowd.

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Guardian Writer Eviscerated For Headline “We Still Don’t Know Why Britons Rioted A Month Ago”

A writer for the far left Guardian newspaper in the UK prompted massive backlash Wednesday by penning a piece claiming that no one really knows why British people angrily took to the streets last month.

Here is the article by Tim Newburn.

It happened largely in poorer working class areas because they’re sick of being treated like second hand citizens in favour of mass unchecked migration, with the trigger point being the brutal murder of three children at a Taylor Swift-themed dance camp in Southport by a second generation Rwandan migrant.

Everyone who expressed anger was immediately labelled a “far right extremist.”

It’s not some sort of mystery as to why this happened.

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The Biden/Harris corrupt DOJ has a nasty trick up its sleeve for J6 political prisoners…

In case you’re wondering just how weaponized and evil our so-called “justice department” has gotten under the Biden/Harris regime, we’ve got proof of the Marxist transformation of our once highly respected court system, all in the name of punishing political dissent. The latest move involves the regime’s favorite target: J6 political prisoners.

As you know, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the J6 defendants in the recent Fischer case. If you need a refresher, here’s what happened.

Lawfare Media:

On June 28, in a six-to-three ruling, the Supreme Court found that to prove a violation of Section 1512(c)(2), the government “must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding or attempted to do so” in Fischer v. United States.

The Court’s decision reverses that of the D.C. Circuit’s, which had adopted a much broader interpretation of the statute.

At issue in the case was the charge of corruptly obstructing an official proceeding under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2). Joseph Fischer, an alleged Jan. 6 rioter, was indicted on seven charges, including one count of obstruction of an official proceeding under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) in 2021. Fischer later filed a motion to dismiss several of the charges against him, including the count under § 1512(c)(2), arguing that the statute “does not criminalize the obstruction of legislative action by Congress” and that any “alleged obstruction of the certification of the Electoral College vote is simply outside the scope” of the statute.

On March 15, 2022, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols granted Fischer’s motion to dismiss his obstruction charge. The judge’s ruling essentially found that the government could not charge Fischer with corruptly obstructing an official proceeding under § 1512(c)(2). The government subsequently appealed the decision before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

After the ruling, the DOJ was forced to drop obstruction charges against many J6ers, including Fischer himself. But, sadly, this story doesn’t end there—not with this corrupt, tyrannical regime. Now, the crooked Biden/Harris DOJ is looking to retry J6ers who have already endured the horrific ordeal of a trial, sentencing, and conviction, all because they ruffled some papers.

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January 6 Was a Deep State False Flag

RFK Jr is dead wrong about Jan 6. That was a false flag created by the Deep State to discredit Trump and MAGA. There are warehouses of evidence to prove that, not to mention simple deductive logic. Those innocents were stampeded by agents in the crowd who remain masked. Any time someone deplores Jan 6, and does not recognize the Dead Hand of our utterly vicious National Security State is a fool, a pawn, an idiot, weak-minded and/or needs to spout that rubbish to pay his or her mortgage. If RFK continues to assert what he did on Tucker Carlson last night, he will lose the support he needs from MAGA, which in my estimate is at least 100,000,000 strong. At least.

Justified is my favorite TV show so I am delighted to be in the same book with Nick Searcy who played the world weary father figure Sheriff in coal country. I watched all seven seasons twice while Eco-Fascists went through exhaustive legal vetting and fact checks. Which only are needed for conservative books published by a mainstream publisher. The crackpot enviro-sky-is-falling books get no vetting at all.

Searcy is a sharp observer and a political savant and he was actually there. Unlike RFK Jr.

As before, for the next few days, I am going to run short – 1-3 minute reads – excerpts from a new book, Against the Corporate Media, 42 Ways the Media Hates You – a book of essays to which I contributed, along with forty-one others. It will be published on September 10th. My purpose is that you come away from this somewhat enlightened as to what the hell happened, and how a once respectable profession became seedy and dishonest. The book provides a clear direction towards root and branch reform. Given these snippets, perhaps you will buy it

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Shut It Down

The recent protests in Bangladesh have led to another example of a national government shutting down the internet and telecommunications. The Bangladeshi government claimed that the shutdown was implemented to stop misinformation. In 2023 the internet was shut down in Libya after a natural disaster to prevent criticism of the local authorities and their response to the emergency. At this time, thirty-nine nations across the world at some time have shut down the internet for one reason or the other. What was once a speculative concept has now become a practice that will soon be accepted.

The United Nations has made access to the internet a right; intentionally denying individuals access to the internet is considered a human rights violation. Though when it comes to human rights, national governments have a tendency to use international bodies such as the UN as a reason for action while dismissing such “rules” for themselves. Such rules are bent, ignored, and broken whenever national governments see fit.  According to Access Now, in 2023 alone there were 283 known internet shut downs used by governments against their citizens, India being the most prolific. The world’s biggest democratic government sees fit to exercise control of information and the communications over those it rules.

Large corporations have a tendency to work with national governments so that they may operate in those nations. Russia and China have provisions to isolate their internet access from the rest of the world, along with “kill switches.” The Australian government has passed laws allowing its federal government to “shut down the net” should its leadership see fit. The potential exists for most nations to do this. All that is needed is a crisis. The provision for a “threat to national interest” allows for governments to cut individuals off from the world and one another.

In Syria the internet was even shut down during high school exams in an attempt to stop students from cheating. Given the extreme rigidity of study and examination for schooling in nations like South Korea, such a reason could also be used there as well. Cultural and state directed interests are going to be key reasons as to why information and communications are controlled and denied. It will vary according to the self-interest of particular regimes and national flavors.

The U.S. government attempted to pass the right to use an internet “kill switch” but scrutiny prevented it from being allowed. With populist leaders and panic mongering of the forever changing crises on the horizon, it is likely that such an option will someday be on the table. It is of no surprise that the United Kingdom has in its power to impose such a shut down. The public is assured that failsafes exist to prevent it from being abused (though given the British government’s fear of memes, it may not really take much).

In a crisis, information and communications are crucial. Advocates for state power and a strong central authority agree, which is why they don’t want them spread. The belief that angels rule the nation and wise magicians control the economy is pervasive and resonates the world over. Information and communications are a sacred act of defiance against evil and authoritarianism in its many variants.

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Protests/Color Revolution in Bangladesh Brings to Power Tax Evading Banker Who Plunged Poor People Into Debt Through Micro-finance Loan Scheme

On August 8, Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and a pioneer in the issuance of micro-finance credit loans, was sworn in as Bangladesh’s Prime Minister after protests forced the resignation of Sheikh Hasina, who had ruled the country for 20 of the last 30 years.

Yunus was the choice of student protest leaders who coordinated demonstrations that forced Hasina from power.

The demonstrations started over an unfair job allotment system and escalated after Hasina disparaged the protesters and deployed repressive police against them.

Many in Bangladesh had been weary over rising inflation and unemployment and tired of Hasina’s growing autocratic methods.

The violent side of the protests was evident in the throwing of Molotov cocktails at police, an attack on the only metro rail system in the capital Dhaka, and torching of the home of Shekikh Majibur Rahman, the country’s founding leader and Ms. Hasina’s father.[1]

The Pakistani-backed Jamaat-e-Islami Party, which was allied with the opposition Bangladeshi Nationalist Party (BNP), played a significant role in the protests and now has a presence in the new interim government.[2]

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Garland Makes An Example Of J6 Protesters To Shut Up Anyone Else Who Might Question Elections

Attorney General Merrick Garland boasted on Friday how his office has prosecuted nearly 1,500 Americans for protesting the 2020 election, warning others they may face similar lawfare should they raise any concerns about the administration of the upcoming November election. 

Speaking at a press briefing, Garland essentially said the Jan. 6 prosecutions should serve to remind Americans what happens if they raise questions about an election. 

“I think our prosecutions have made clear what we think about people who try to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power, which is [an] essential and fundamental element of our democracy. A quibble about whether we have 1,500 or slightly less than 1,500 — but we have way more than 1400 now — prosecutions. We have a substantial number of convictions,” Garland boasted.

“I think that’s shown to everybody how seriously we take an effort to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power the last January 6, the coming January 6, and every January 6 after that,” he continued. “I want to make clear to anybody who is thinking about interfering with that: They can see what we’ve done with respect to the January 6 prosecutions, and [the] Justice Department will continue to protect our democracy.”

Director at Big Data Poll Richard Baris explained in a post on X why Garland’s comments are so alarming.

“This is what 50% of the country heard from Garland. ‘We’re gonna steal this election and if you try to fight us, we’ll put you in prison.’ God this country is totally corrupt,” he wrote.

“DOJ prosecutors and DC judges are warning that the hammer will come down on any American who protests the 2024 election results,” echoed independent journalist Julie Kelly on X after Garland made his press conference statement. “They treat J6ers like mass murderers,” she continued, citing comments from Obama-appointed District Judge Tanya Chutkan “lecturing a J6 protestor convicted of a misdemeanor.”

The DOJ brought the “hammer” down in the wake of the 2020 election, as Garland made clear. The DOJ charged hundreds of protesters — including a “praying grandma” in her 70s — under a federal statute that the Supreme Court later ruled was used in an over-broad capacity. 

But American skepticism about our electoral processes, in part, stems from the actions the DOJ has taken, starting with their attempt to criminalize election-related speech.

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Suspect was across the street from Capitol Police squad car while walking to Jan. 5 bomb drop, video shows

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story said it appeared the bombing suspect interacted with police. After publication, a congressional investigator with access to a camera angle that has not been made public reached out and told Blaze News a person similarly attired to the bomber who comes out of the alley and crosses the street toward the two Capitol Police vehicles is not the same person as the hoodie-clad pipe-bomb suspect seen walking down the alley just minutes earlier.

A Capitol Police squad car with its emergency lights on was parked directly across the street at the time a hoodie-clad suspect allegedly carrying a pipe bomb walked down the alley toward the rear of the Republican National Committee building, Blaze News has learned.

Video never before disclosed or made public shows the pipe-bomb suspect bathed in the red and blue squad-car lights on Jan. 5, 2021, just as he or she walked to place the explosive device. The footage was discovered by social media user “Armitas” (@accabbat on X),who provided it exclusively to Blaze News.

An individual with similar dress to the suspected pipe bomber who emerged from the same alley minutes later was unrelated to the bombing case, according to congressional investigators who have access to a camera angle that has not been made public.

A previous version of this story said an individual dressed like the bomb suspect crossed the street and interacted with Capitol Police parked along C Street. Congressional investigators said camera footage they have seen shows that person did not speak to officers and his or her presence was unrelated to the bomb case. Blaze News has requested access to footage from the camera, located in front of the Library of Congress near the alley entrance.

Discovery of the new video raises questions about why the footage has not been disclosed to the public in the nearly 44 months since Jan. 6, and why yet more cameras with clues to the pipe bomb mystery are being withheld by federal authorities.

The video from Armitas and subsequent investigation by Blaze News showed the alleged bomber emerged onto First Street Southeast from an alley between the Capitol Hill Club and the Republican National Committee at 8:14 p.m. on Jan. 5.The video from Armitas and subsequent investigation by Blaze News showed the alleged bomber emerged onto First Street Southeast from an alley between the Capitol Hill Club and the Republican National Committee at 8:14 p.m. Jan. 5.

The suspect walked north past the Capitol Hill Club. As the individual passed under the restaurant’s green awning at 8:14:30 p.m., a Capitol Police SUV turned the corner onto First Street. The alleged bomber waved at the squad car and then pointed — it appeared — at the driver as the vehicle passed by.

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55 to 60 Arrested During Violent DNC Protests: Chicago Police

Nighttime protests outside the Israeli consulate in Chicago on Aug. 20 led to between 55 and 60 arrests, according to Superintendent Larry Snelling of the Chicago Police Department.

He said exact figures would be provided at a later time.

“Last night was a danger to our city and a danger to our citizens,” Snelling told reporters during a news conference on Aug. 21, more than half a day after violence broke out west of the United Center during the Democratic National Convention.

The Epoch Times witnessed multiple arrests as pro-Palestinian demonstrators, many with their faces obscured, physically clashed with law enforcement on Madison Street.

Snelling told the media that those apprehended on the scene included three journalists.

“We need you guys to step to the side,” he said, recommending that reporters keep at least two arm’s-length distance between themselves and officers to maintain what he described as a “reactionary gap.”

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