“Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Police Department top brass condemned ‘outside agitators’ fanning the flames of anti-Israel protests at Columbia and New York University, as police made more arrests. At his usual Tuesday press conference from City Hall, Adams, a Democrat and former police officer, praised the NYPD’s response. ‘We can’t have outside agitators come in and be destructive to our city,’ Adams said. ‘Someone wanted something to happen at that protest at NYU.’ ‘People who peacefully protest for an issue, they’re not throwing bottles and chairs,’ the mayor added. ‘And so we know that we have acknowledged and saw across the country, there are people who come have nothing to do with the issue and they want to aggravate. Now, if those police officers didn’t show a high level of discipline, this could have been an ugly situation.'” (04/23/24)
Source: Common Dreams
by Edward Ahmed Mitchell & Robert McCaw
“The spirit of Joseph McCarthy is alive and well in the halls of Congress. For proof, look no further than the Republican-controlled House education committee’s latest hearing focused on investigating allegations of antisemitism at American colleges and universities. During last week’s widely covered hearing, many committee members followed a predictable playbook: mischaracterize any pro-Palestinian student activism as antisemitic, ask incendiary ‘gotcha’ questions about imaginary incidents of antisemitism, and then pressure college leaders to silence young people who advocate for Palestinian human rights. House committee members like Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) have mastered this artform, which gives them an opportunity to go viral in right-wing media, smear pro-Palestinian students, and virtue signal that they oppose any form of bigotry even as their political party enables nearly every form of bigotry.” (04/23/24)
“What began last week when students at a New York Ivy League school refused to end their protest against Israel’s war with Hamas had turned into a much larger movement by Tuesday as students across the nation set up encampments, occupied buildings and ignored demands to leave. Protests against the war had been bubbling for months but kicked into a higher gear after more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia University’s upper Manhattan campus were arrested Thursday. Dozens more protesters have been arrested at other campuses since, and many now face charges of trespassing or disorderly conduct. With tensions at Columbia continuing to run high and some students afraid to set foot on the campus, officials said the university will switch to hybrid learning for the rest of the semester.” (04/23/24)
“A new course offered for students in many of China’s vocational schools is a drama workshop. The goal, however, is not a job in theater. Rather, students are encouraged to speak out in a theater setting about the public stigma – and self-stigma – of being in vocational school. They are taught to write a play and perform it before an audience based on their feelings about a deep social prejudice in China against those who do not follow the academic track for a university degree. They verbalize the internal shame, helping them reshape a negative identity, according to Wang Zijin, former program director at Hope School, a platform designed for mainly rural schools. ” (04/23/24)
“The US justice department will pay $138.7m (£110m) to survivors of disgraced national gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar. In a 2022 lawsuit, some of Nassar’s victims alleged that the FBI mishandled credible complaints of sexual assaults and failed to take them seriously. The 139 claimants included US Olympic gymnastics gold medallists Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney. Nassar is currently serving up to 175 years in prison for sexual assault. In 2021, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, which serves as a watchdog for the FBI, concluded that the agency disregarded allegations about Nassar and made a raft of errors. … including a failure to formally document meeting with USA Gymnastics officials after they concluded their own five-week internal probe into Nassar’s behaviour. It also cited a failure to contact state and local authorities about the potential risk he continued to pose to athletes.” (04/23/24)
“A state senator from Orange County wants to reform how passenger security screening is conducted at California airports. His complaint lies not with full body scanners, but with programs that allow some passengers to jump to the front of security lines. Authored by Democratic state Sen. Josh Newman, Senate Bill 1372 would prohibit public airports in California from entering into new agreements with third-party vendors that allow certain passengers to skip ahead of other travelers after passing a biometric scanner. It also would require vendors like Clear Secure Inc. to create their own dedicated queues separate from a general security lane, rather than sharing the lines used by other passengers. Newman, whose district encompasses parts of Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties, said the bill will make airports safer and more equitable.” (04/23/24)
“Nearly every day for the past month, the Biden administration has made an announcement about a finalized regulation. They have completed a minimum staffing ratio for nursing homes, conserved 13 million acres in the Alaskan Arctic, designated ‘forever chemicals’ as hazardous substances, invested in rooftop solar panels in low-income communities, banned most noncompete agreements at U.S. businesses, directed federal agencies to purchase sustainable products, and closed the ‘gun show loophole’, to name just a few. Why has April been a month of regulatory action? The administration surely wants to show key constituencies that they have made progress. But policymakers are also racing to get regulations done to protect them from being overturned in the next Congress.” [editor’s note: As if we needed another reason NOT to support this regime – SAT] (04/23/24)
“Papua New Guinea’s leader has dismissed US President Joe Biden’s suggestion that his uncle may have fallen prey to cannibals in the Pacific nation during World War Two. Mr Biden said last week his relative had been shot down over the country, and his body never found as ‘there were a lot of cannibals’. US media pointed out that his comments were not backed up by official records. Papuan Prime Minister James Marape put it down to ‘loose’ talk. He said his American counterpart had had a ‘blurry moment’ and insisted the US-Papuan relationship was strong, and characterised by ‘deeper values’. Mr Marape said the pair had met several times, and ‘never in those moments (has) he spoke(n) of PNG as cannibals’. While the nation does have some history of cannibalism in remote areas, it has tried for years to shed the trope, which it views as outdated.” (04/22/24)
“There was a macabre familiarity to the sight last week of a dead man in Brazil being wheeled into a bank by a greedy relative to sign a loan document. The woman is seen on social media video talking to the corpse in the wheelchair while trying to hold up his floppy head with one hand. In her other hand, she clutches a pen lodged between the dead man’s fingers as she attempts to sign documents to secure a loan of $3,250. … Rio de Janeiro police who arrested Nunes said Uncle Paulo, who was actually her cousin, had been dead for at least two hours. Isn’t it a pity we can’t charge the Democratic Party with the same offenses?” (04/22/24)
“As I peered down inside a briefing tent at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, California, on March 5, a giant floor screen projected the back-and-forth maneuvers of ‘red’ (aggressor) and ‘blue’ (defending) forces across the western Pacific. Over and over again, air and sea assets of the red force (identified as a ‘near-peer adversary’ of the United States — a common stand-in for China) penetrated deep into ‘blue’ territory occupied by Washington’s allies, only to be repulsed or destroyed by blue’s own combat forces. In a scenario that can only be described as a modernized version of World War II in the Pacific, blue forces augmented their air and naval strikes with amphibious assaults to drive red invaders from islands they had seized at the onset of the exercise.” (04/22/24)
