Tag: protests

Trump promises crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests if elected

Former United States President Donald Trump has promised that he will crack down on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses if he wins the 2024 US presidential election.

Earlier this month, the likely Republican nominee told a small group of predominantly Jewish donors that he would expel student demonstrators, who he claimed were part of a “radical revolution”, from the US if he is elected, according to a report by The Washington Post released on Monday.

“If you get me elected, and you should really be doing this … we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” Trump said, according to the report, quoting people at the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The former president also praised the New York police for clearing the campus at Columbia University in late April, and said the other cities needed to follow suit, saying “it has to be stopped now”.

Student protests against the Israeli war on Gaza have rocked the US over the past few weeks, prompting a police crackdown on many campuses and more than 2,000 arrests.

In mid-April, Columbia University saw a Gaza solidarity encampment, with students urging the institution to divest from companies associated with Israel. This movement spread to campuses in California, Texas, and many other states.

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No diploma: Colleges withhold degrees from students after pro-Palestinian protests

Graduation is an important moment for many Americans. More than just pomp and circumstance, the ceremonies mark when students are handed the most coveted testimonial in academic life: A diploma.

But for some college students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests, campus activism has cost them their degrees – at least for a while.

“Four years and just a criminal record, nothing else,” said Youssef Hasweh, one of four students at the University of Chicago who have had their degrees withheld pending an investigation into a protest encampment. “A decade of (high school and college) work down the toilet because I decided to express my free speech.”

Students being denied conferment – some of whom have faced arrests, expulsions, suspensions and other disciplinary action – say they’re in limbo and are being made into examples. As they await appeals processes and the results of university investigations, they’re preparing for an uncertain future. In the worst-case scenario, they’ll be saddled with debt and will have no degree to show for it.

But while the stakes are high, they told USA TODAY that none of them regret their part in campus protests over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

“I have these punishments and have to work through this stress, but it’s incomparable to the plight of Palestinians,” said Devron Burks, a Vanderbilt student who was arrested and expelled following the occupation of a campus building. “I don’t regret it, and I don’t think I ever will.”

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Chaos In Mexico: Angry Mob Attempts To Set Fire To Israeli Embassy

AFP journalists report that riots broke out overnight between police and a group of 200 angry protesters outside the Israeli embassy in Mexico. The demonstrators, participating in a protest called “Urgent Action for Rafah,” were denouncing the Israeli military operation in the southern Gazan city of Rafah. The unrest followed an Israeli strike on a displacement camp near Rafah that killed 45 people earlier in the week. 

Some protesters covered their faces and threw stones at riot police who blocked their path to the diplomatic complex in the city’s Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood.

Around 200 people joined the “Urgent Action for Rafah” demonstration, about 30 of whom started to break down barriers preventing them from reaching the Israeli mission.

Police officers deployed tear gas and threw back the stones hurled at them by protesters.-AFP 

According to The Jewish Chronicle, “Rioters on Tuesday set fire to the Israeli Embassy,” adding, “The riot came after Mexico filed a declaration of intervention in South Africa’s “genocide” case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.” 

There has been no official confirmation of fire damage to the embassy.

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A Brutal Suppression of Speech

Denial of civil liberties, accompanied by punishment for anybody who exposes those violations, has become commonplace in contemporary America.

Yet, nothing that the nation has experienced — and that the more discerning protest — prepared us for the grotesque spectacle on display in the brutal suppression of free speech on university campuses. 

What we witness is the iron fist of autocracy employed to intimidate, to hurt, to deter those who would question — however peaceably — the right of the powers-that-be to impose their confected version of the truth on the public. Moreover, it is grounded on an arbitrary assumption of power having no basis in law or customary practice.

Two singular features of this situation focus our attention. First, there is the stunning near unanimity of agreement by all segments of society’s elites on the rightness of the ruling narrative — and on the actions they take to enforce it. 

That is to say:

1) casting the issue as the dangerous radicalization of students by nefarious forces;

2) smearing demonstrators as “anti-Semites” — despite the large numbers of Jewish participants;

3) blanking out any reference to the cause and motivations of the protest: Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians; and

4) the need to crack down hard on these seditious students — physically by rioting police, and administratively by summary expulsions and suspensions without a semblance of due process.

These assertions emanate from the mouths of elected officials, police commissioners, media personalities, pundits and — most distressing — university presidents as well as boards of regents and trustees. 

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Mayor defends NYPD response after officers seen punching pro-Palestinian protesters

New York City Mayor Eric Adams defended the police department’s response to a pro-Palestinian street demonstration in Brooklyn over the weekend, calling video of officers repeatedly punching men lying prone on the ground an “isolated incident.”

“Look at that entire incident,” Adams said on the “Mornings on 1” program on the local cable news channel NY1. He complained that protesters who marched through Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge section on Saturday had blocked traffic, spit at officers and, in once instance, climbed on top of a moving city bus. “I take my hat off to the Police Department, how they handled an unruly group of people.”

“People want to take that one isolated incident that we’re investigating. They need to look at the totality of what happened in that bedroom community,” Adams added.

Footage shot by bystanders and independent journalists shows police officers intercepting a march in the street, shoving participants toward the sidewalk, and then grabbing some people in the crowd and dragging them down to the asphalt. Officers can be seen repeatedly punching at least three protesters, in separate incidents, as they lay pinned on the ground.

A video shot by videographer Peter Hambrecht and posted on X shows an officer in a white shirt punching a protester while holding his throat. Hambrecht said the arrests took place after police told the crowd to disperse.

“They were aware they might get arrested, but many times people use that to justify the beating which is obviously ridiculous,” Hambrecht told The Associated Press in a text message.

Independent journalist Katie Smith separately recorded video of an officer unleashing a volley of punches on a man pinned to the ground, hitting him at least five times with a closed fist.

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Newly Published Records Show FBI Officials Were Instructed To ‘Stand Down’ The Day Before Jan. 6 After Targeted Individuals From a Group They Had Infiltrated Decided Not to Come to DC

The Federal Bureau of Investigation continues to cover-up how the government entrapped Americans who demonstrated at the January 6 Save America rally.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI released a trove of internal documents on May 7 on “The Vault” section of its website titled “United States Capitol Violence and related Events of January 6, 2021 Part 35.”

Email correspondence among FBI officials in the days leading up to Jan. 6, real-time reactions to violence at the fedsurrection, and guidance of the bureau’s response to the Capitol riot are among the 107 pages of newly released documents.

But the most interesting aspect of the FOIA drop is the information the bureau concealed. The increasingly lawless agency, that continues to surveil and terrorize Americans who protested that day, heavily redacted nearly every page of the records, hiding all evidence potentially indicating malfeasance.

Despite a frustrating number of the pages being redacted,  some interesting tidbits remain among the scraps.

An email thread with the subject line, “Stand down. See Below” was sent at 5:46 pm the day before the massive crowd of demonstrators was bombed, gassed and shot by police at the Capitol.

“We are standing down in [REDACTED]. The predicated subjects have been [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] is being informed. The only people from the group who are continuing to DC are non-subjects, who are not carrying weapons, and appear to be solely involved in legal First Amendment protesting,” states one of the emails from the thread.

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Texas pardons US Army sergeant Daniel Perry who was convicted of murder for shooting AK-47 wielding BLM protester during 2020 riot

A Texas man convicted of shooting a Black Lives Matter protestor dead during the 2020 riots has received a pardon. 

Daniel Perry, a US Army Sergeant, was found guilty in April 2023 of murdering protestor Garrett Foster in Austin, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. 

Texas Governor Greg Abbott requested the parole board looked into his case to discuss a possible pardon just days later, which led to a unanimous approval vote that was announced Thursday. 

In a statement after the vote was announced, Abbott cited Texas’ ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws, which allow people to use deadly force if they feel they are in imminent danger. 

‘Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney,’ Abbott said.

‘I thank the Board for its thorough investigation, and I approve their pardon recommendation.’ 

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UCLA attackers exposed: meet the violent Zionist agitators LA police haven’t arrested

The Grayzone has obtained a dossier detailing the identities of the Zionist hooligans who assaulted UCLA anti-genocide student protesters. It was sent to LA police, but no arrests have been made. And the cops still can’t explain why they disappeared for hours during the mob attack.

On April 30, thirty people were injured when a mob of Zionist hooligans savagely assaulted the pro-Palestine UCLA encampment shortly before midnight. For over three hours, local and campus police stood down as the masked thugs assaulted students, journalists, and even officers of the law with fireworks volleys, pepper spray, and metal pipes. Though multiple attackers have been identified by community members on social media, to date there have been no arrests of pro-Israel goons.

The Grayzone has obtained a dossier composed by anonymous sleuths claiming involvement with the UCLA student protests which apparently identifies some of the attack’s perpetrators. The students emailed the document to the UCLA administration and police (UCPD), as well as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. It contains detailed information about the identities of those who were filmed carrying out wanton violence.

Los Angeles-area police have arrested droves of students protesting Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, accusing over 40 students and journalists of “conspiracy to commit burglary” for attempting a sit-in on school grounds. Yet local authorities have made a grand total of zero arrests in the coordinated Zionist mob assault against UCLA anti-genocide protesters on April 30. 

The LA Times has reported that local law enforcement is relying on sophisticated facial recognition technology to hunt down the attackers. But as the UCLA sleuths’ dossier makes clear, many assailants have already been identified by matching their identities with social media profiles.

The UCPD and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department did not respond to questions from The Grayzone about whether the persons identified in the dossier were under investigation, or had been taken into custody.

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START THE COURT MARTIAL PROCEEDINGS: DC National Guard Whistleblower Alleges Trump’s Commander-in-Chief Powers Were Revoked by Military Brass During January 6 Capitol Riot

In April the House Subcommittee on Oversight held a hearing with National Guard whistleblowers who stepped forward to correct the media lies and dishonest narrative by Democrats on the January 6 protests and riots.

Four members of the National Guard testified that they were ready to be deployed on January 6 but THE PENTAGON held them back!

This directly brings General Milley’s actions into question!

Kash Patel tipped us off last month that there were more reports like this coming.

National Guard whistleblowers: Command Sgt. Major Michael E. Brooks, Colonel Earl G. Matthews, Aaron Dean Retired, and Captain Timothy Nick stepped forward and testified before Congress to correct the record on January 6.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser were both warned about the security situation prior to January 6th, and both turned down National Guard troops at the US Capitol that day.

Pelosi and Mayor Muriel Bowser turned down thousands of National Guard troops at the Capitol on January 6 for political reasons.

Chris Wray’s FBI also refused to notify the Trump administration and his cabinet secretaries that they believed there could be violence like the mass protests at the Capitol that took place that day.

Nancy Pelosi also refused the National Guard at the US Capitol due to politics.

Capitol Police Chief Steve Sund said he asked House and Senate security officials for permission to request that the D.C. National Guard be placed on standby in case he needed quick backup. But they both turned him down.

John Solomon from Just The News released an explosive report in 2022 that revealed Capitol Police were first warned about possible violence at the January 6th protests TWO WEEKS before the planned rallies.

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New Columbia Wrinkle: Police Takedown Facilitated By Faculty Member Who Serves On NYPD Anti-Terror Squad…Conspiracists Cry Foul

The recent ousting of students and professional agitators from a Columbia University building was led in part by a Columbia adjunct professor who is also the civilian Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism for the NYPD.

The story is from The Grayzone, a media project headed by Max Blumenthal, Jewish blogger and former Clinton aide. That said, the article is written with a decidedly pro-Palestine bent. Author Wyatt Reed describes the Columbia uprising as a “protest model [that] has since spread to over 100 other universities in the US, and even been taken up abroad, with similar actions occurring at Leeds University in the UK and the Sorbonne in Paris”, as if it were organic, and not, in fact, funded by groups such as the Soros-backed U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR).

Still, Reed injects some salient points into the Columbia conversation. He correctly notes that, “During the NYPD’s triumphant May 1 post-raid press conference, Weiner blamed ‘outside agitators’ for triggering the military-style police crackdown at Columbia. However, she refused to name the outsiders supposedly on the scene.”

Next, Reed asserts that Weiner falsely used the terroristic past of an elderly Columbia encampment visitor–Nahla al-Arian, 63, as preface for police intevention:

“…a brief visit to Columbia by Nahla Al-Arian, who Weiner incorrectly described as ‘the wife of somebody who had been convicted for material support to terrorism.’

‘That’s not somebody who I would want necessarily influencing my child if I were a parent of somebody at Columbia,’ Weiner commented.

Nahla’s husband, Palestinian academic Sami Al-Arian, had been indicted on flimsy terrorism charges in 2003, but a jury refused to convict him. Nevertheless, her brief stop at the Columbia encampment — where she says she did not even interact with any demonstrators — was cited by Adams during three separate media engagements to justify the police repression.”

–Ibid., editorial emphasis.

Further, Reed points out, somewhat ominously, that Weiner is the granddaughter of one of the creators of the hydrogen bomb:

“Weiner is the granddaughter of Stanislaw Ulam, the Polish Jewish mathematician who helped conceive the hydrogen bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. “I’m very proud of that legacy,” Weiner said of her grandfather’s work upon being appointed as NYPD intelligence chief.“

–Ibid.

Reed stops short of calling Weiner a Mossad asset, but he sets the table elaborately, stopping just short of lighting the dinner candles:

“The NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau currently maintains an office in Tel Aviv, Israel, where it coordinates with Israel’s security apparatus and maintains a department liaison. Weiner appears to serve as a bridge between the Bureau’s offices in Israel and New York.

A 2011 AP investigation revealed that a so-called ‘Demographics Unit’ operated secretly within the NYPD’s Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau. This shadowy outfit spied on Muslims around the New York City area, and even on students at campuses outside the state who were involved in Palestine solidarity activism. The unit was developed in tandem with the CIA, which has refused to name the former Middle East station chief it posted in the senior ranks of the NYPD’s intelligence division. 

The ‘Demographics Unit’ appears to have been inspired by Israeli intelligence as well. As a former police official told the AP, the unit attempted to ‘map the city’s human terrain’ through a program ‘modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank.‘”

–Ibid., editorial emphasis.

To sum up: Rebecca Weiner is, plainly, a liaison between the NYPD and Columbia University. The police division she works for was formed as a response to 9/11, and was done so with Israeli intelligence guidance, as would seem a natural fit for a country that has dealt with Middle East terrorism for decades.

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