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Fifth Column

UPenn students face felony charges over attempted anti-Israel occupation

2024-05-19

[IsraelTimes] Campus police say 7 students among the 19 protesters arrested for trying to occupy building at Philadelphia university, including person who assaulted officer

A half-dozen University of Pennsylvania students were among 19 pro-Paleostinian protesters arrested during an attempt to occupy a school building, university police said Saturday.

Their arrests came a week after authorities broke up an anti-Israel protest encampment on campus and arrested nine students — and as other colleges across the country, anxious to prepare for commencement season, have either negotiated agreements with students or called in police to dismantle protest camps.

Members of Penn Students Against the Occupation of Paleostine announced the action Friday at the school’s Fisher-Bennett Hall, urging supporters to bring "flags, pots, pans, noise-makers, megaphones" and other items, the University of Pennsylvania Division of Public Safety said in a news release.

Officers could be seen closing in "within the hour," The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. University police supported by city police then escorted the protesters out and secured the building, news outlets reported.

Police said after clearing the building that they recovered "lock-picking tools and homemade metal shields fashioned from oil drums."

Exit doors had been secured with zip ties and barbed wire and barricaded with metal chairs and desks, while windows were covered by newspaper and cardboard, and bike racks and metal chairs blocked entrances, police said.

Seven of the students arrested on Friday remained in jug Saturday awaiting felony charges, including one person who assaulted an officer, campus police said. A dozen were issued citations for failing to disperse and follow police commands. They have been released from custody.

The attempted occupation of Fisher-Bennett Hall came a week after city and campus police broke up a two-week encampment on the campus, arresting 33 people, nine of whom were students and two dozen of whom had "no Penn affiliation," according to university officials.

Meanwhile,
...back at the chili cook-off, Chuck and Manuel's rivalry was entering a new and more dangerous phase...
a group protesting Israel over the war in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
against Hamas
Hamas

..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
and demanding that the University of reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown
...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...
divest from companies doing business with the Jewish state temporarily took over a building on the school’s campus Friday afternoon.

Members of the group surrounded the Institute of Politics building around 5 p.m. while others made their way inside, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The demonstrators hung a sign renaming the building "Casbah Basel al-A’araj," after the "hipster terrorist" killed in a 2017 shootout with Israeli forces in the West Bank.

The Chicago protest follows the May 7 clearing of an anti-Israel tent encampment at the school by police. University of Chicago administrators had initially adopted a permissive approach, but said earlier this month that the protest had crossed a line and caused growing concerns about safety.

On Friday, campus coppers using riot shields gained access to the Institute of Politics building and scuffled with protesters. Some protesters climbed from a second-floor window, according to the Sun-Times.

The school said protesters attempted to bar the entrance, damaged university property and ignored directives to clear the way, and that those inside the building left when campus coppers entered.

"The University of Chicago is fundamentally committed to upholding the rights of protesters to express a wide range of views," school spokesperson Gerald McSwiggan said in a statement. "At the same time, university policies make it clear that protests cannot jeopardize public safety, disrupt the university’s operations or involve the destruction of property."

No arrests or injuries were reported.

Nearly 3,000 people have been arrested on US campuses over the past month. As summer break approaches, there have been fewer new arrests and campuses have been calmer. Still, colleges have been vigilant for disruptions to commencement ceremonies.

On Thursday, police began dismantling a pro-Paleostinian encampment at DePaul University in Chicago, hours after the school’s president told students to leave the area or face arrest.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas and other murderous Moslems stormed into southern Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 252 hostages. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 35,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though only some 24,000 fatalities have been identified at hospitals. The tolls, which cannot be verified, include some 15,000 terror operatives Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 murderous Moslems inside Israel on October 7.

280 soldiers have been killed during the ground offensive against Hamas and amid operations along the Gaza border. A civilian Defense Ministry contractor has also been killed in the Gaza Strip.

Link

Fifth Column

Police in riot gear dismantle anti-Israel encampment at Chicago’s DePaul University

2024-05-17

[IsraelTimes] Protesters leave voluntarily as cops move in; school publishes examples of over 1,000 complaints about pro-Palestinian protests, including antisemitic harassment of students

Police began dismantling an anti-Israel encampment early Thursday at DePaul University in reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown

reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown

...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...
, hours after the school’s president told students to leave the area or face arrest.

Officers and workers in yellow vests cleared out tents and camping equipment at the student encampment, leaving behind yellow squares of dead or dying grass where the tents had stood. Front-loaders were being used to remove the camping equipment.

Just across the street from where the encampment was spread across a grassy expanse of DePaul’s campus known as "The Quad," a few dozen protesters stood along a sidewalk in front of a service station, clapping their hands in unison as an apparent protest leader paced back and forth before them, speaking into a bullhorn.

In videos from the scene broadcast on local media and social networks, protesters could be heard chanting anti-Israel slogans such as "Intifada, intifada," a reference to periods of deadly Paleostinian terror attacks against Israeli civilians in the late 1980s and early 1990s and again in the early 2000s.

Chicago police said that all of the protesters at the encampment "voluntarily left" the area when police arrived early Thursday.

"There were no confrontations and there was no resistance," Jon Hein, chief of patrol for the Chicago Police Department, said at a news briefing. "As we approached, all the subjects voluntarily left the area."

Hein said, however, that two people, a male and female in their 20s, were arrested outside the encampment "for obstruction of traffic."

The university posted on its website examples of over 1,000 registered complaints about the protest encampment, including pictures of antisemitic stickers and posters, damage to university property and testimony from students.

"My son and I watched a group of five masked men carrying Paleostinian flags push a Jewish man to the ground and then steal his Israeli flag. I was called a baby killer, a murderer, a genocide supporter.  My friends had paint thrown on them, were pushed and verbally assaulted," one student testimony from DePaul read.

Police also found knives and a pellet gun while dismantling the tents, according to the university.

After clearing out the encampment at DePaul University, Chicago police found multiple knives and a pellet gun.

The move to clear the campus came less than a week after the school’s president said public safety was at risk.

The university on Saturday said it had reached an "impasse" with the school’s protesters, leaving the future of their encampment on the Chicago campus unclear. Most of DePaul’s commencement ceremonies will be held the June 15-16 weekend.

In a statement then, DePaul President Robert Manuel and Provost Salma Ghanem said they believe that students intended to protest peacefully, but "the responses to the encampment have inadvertently created public safety issues that put our community at risk."

Efforts to resolve the differences with DePaul Divestment Coalition over the past 17 days were unsuccessful, Manuel said in a statement sent to students, faculty and staff Thursday morning.

"Our Office of Public Safety and Chicago Police are now disassembling the encampment," he said. "Every person currently in the encampment will be given the opportunity to leave peacefully and without being arrested."

He said that since the encampment began, "the situation has steadily escalated with physical altercations, credible threats of violence from people not associated with our community."

Tensions at DePaul flared the previous weekend when counter protesters showed up to the campus in the city’s Lincoln Park neighborhood and prompted Chicago police to intervene.

The student-led DePaul Divestment Coalition, which is calling on the university to divest from Israel, set up the encampment April 30. The group alleged university officials walked away from talks and tried to force students into signing an agreement, according to a student statement late Saturday.

"I don’t want my tuition money to be invested in my family’s suffering," Henna Ayesh, a Paleostinian student at DePaul and Coalition member, said in the statement.

DePaul is on the city’s North Side. Last week, police removed a similar encampment at the University of Chicago on the city’s South Side.

The News Agency that Dare Not be Named has recorded at least 79 incidents since April 18 where arrests were made at campus protests across the US. More than 2,900 people have been arrested on the campuses of 60 colleges and universities. The figures are based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.

Link

Fifth Column

Cops clear anti-Israel encampment, arrest 33 at DC campus as mayor's hearing canceled; 2600 arrested on 50 campuses thus far

2024-05-09

[IsraelTimes] Officials made decision to clear tents after demonstrators ’gathered improvised weapons’ and were ’casing’ school buildings with possible intention of occupying them

Police using pepper spray cleared an anti-Israel tent encampment at George Washington University and arrested 33 demonstrators early Wednesday, hours after dozens marched to the home of the school’s president as city officials prepared to appear before Congress on the protest’s handling.

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser and Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith were called to testify Wednesday afternoon at the Republican-led House Oversight and Accountability Committee, but the hearing was canceled after the arrests. The mayor said she spoke with Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House panel, on Wednesday morning and "he expressed his interest in making sure the city and the chief can focus on this ongoing operation" and pulled the hearing.

After the crackdown, Bowser told news hounds that she and the police made the decision to clear the camp based on shifting information about increased threats to public safety. "Our response to demonstrations is always rooted in public safety and responsibility," she said.

Smith added that there were signs that "the protest was becoming more volatile and less stable." Among them were indications that protesters had "gathered improvised weapons" and were "casing" university buildings with the possible intention of occupying them, said Jeffery Carroll, the police department’s executive assistant chief.

Tensions have ratcheted up in standoffs with far-left protesters of the Israel-Hamas
Hamas

...a regional Iranian catspaw,...
war on campuses across the United States and increasingly in Europe. Some colleges cracked down immediately; others have tolerated the demonstrations. Some have begun to lose patience and have called in police over concerns about disruptions to campus life and safety.

DC police said officers moved to disperse demonstrators at George Washington because "there has been a gradual escalation in the volatility of the protest." They said arrests included ones for the assault on a police officer and unlawful entry. They confirmed they used pepper spray outside the encampment against protesters who were trying to break police lines and enter.

George Washington had warned of possible suspensions for continuing the camp on University Yard. Protesters carrying signs reading "Free Paleostine" and "Hands off Rafah" also marched to school President Ellen Granberg’s home Tuesday night.

The school said in a statement: "While the university is committed to protecting students’ rights to free expression, the encampment had evolved into an unlawful activity, with participants in direct violation of multiple university policies and city regulations."

A week ago, the George Washington encampment was host to a somewhat chaotic visit from several Republican members of the House oversight panel who criticized the protests and condemned Bowser’s refusal at that point to send in police.

Bowser on Monday confirmed the city and police department declined the university’s request to intervene. "We did not have any violence to interrupt on the GW campus," she said then.

But in the early hours of Wednesday, hundreds of Metropolitan Police Department officers descended on the scene, reported The GW Hatchet, the university’s student newspaper.

At least two officers deployed pepper spray on protesters, who then set up an impromptu medical area at a market near the campus, the paper said. Organizers ran to a convenience store to buy water to rinse their eyes.

Since April 18, just over 2,600 people have been arrested on 50 campuses, figures based on AP reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies after this latest pro-Paleostinian movement was launched by a protest at Columbia University in New York. Many, if not the majority, of the arrests are believed to be non-students as bully boy, outside agitators have joined the campus protests.

Another anti-Israel encampment was cleared by officers in riot gear at the University of reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown
...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...
on Tuesday after administrators who had initially adopted a permissive approach said the protesters had crossed a line, increasing safety concerns. Hundreds of protesters had gathered for at least eight days until administrators warned them Friday to leave or face removal.

"The university remains a place where dissenting voices have many avenues to express themselves, but we cannot enable an environment where the expression of some dominates and disrupts the healthy functioning of the community for the rest," University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos wrote.

Other schools are letting protesters hold rallies and organize their encampments as they see fit.

The president of Wesleyan University, a liberal arts school in Connecticut, has commended the on-campus demonstrations, which have included a tent encampment, as an act of political expression. The camp there has grown from about 20 tents a week ago to more than 100.

"The protesters’ cause is important — bringing attention to the killing of innocent people," university President Michael Roth wrote to the campus community Thursday. "And we continue to make space for them to do so, as long as that space is not disruptive to campus operations."

The Rhode Island School of Design’s president, Crystal Williams, spent more than five hours with protesters discussing their demands after students started occupying a building Monday.

On Tuesday the school announced it was relocating classes from the building, which was covered with posters reading "Free Paleostine" and "Let Gazoo
Islamic Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response. In October of 2023 Gazooks belonging to Hamas invaded Israel, killed over a thousand people, raped a bunch of women. Then they bitched and moaned about genocide when their butts handed to them in the entirely justified retaliation.
Live."

Some colleges have tried tactics from appeasement to threats of disciplinary action to clear the way for commencements.

Police moved in Tuesday night to break up an encampment at the University of Massachusetts. Video from the scene in Amherst showed an hours-long operation as dozens of coppers in riot gear systematically tearing down tents and taking protesters into custody. The operation continued into early Wednesday.

Police said about 130 people were arrested there Tuesday night after protesters refused orders to disperse.

Further details on the charges and the schedule for arraignments will be forthcoming. Early this morning, UMass Police said 109 people had been booked and charges were pending for approximately 25 other individuals.

UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes said he ordered the sweep after discussions over a wide range of demands failed to yield an agreement to dismantle the encampment and engage in "constructive discussions."

The demonstrators have been calling on their universities to end all partnerships with Israeli academia and to cut all financial ties with companies linked to Israel — a nearly impossible goal given that most colleges have complicated portfolios that include investments in companies that might not be Israeli-based themselves but do have ties with Israel such as Google, Microsoft and the S&P stock exchange.

Link

Fifth Column

Former Obama Education Secretary Attends Chicago Encampment with Radicals Connected to Burning U.S. Flag

2024-05-06

[Breitbart] Arne Duncan, former President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education, was photographed at an anti-Israel encampment next to a Chicago alderman who has received criticism for speaking in front of a burned American flag.

In a post on social media from the Coalition of Progressive Staffers from the Mayor’s Office and the Chicago city council, Duncan was seen standing next to Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez, who represents Chicago’s 25th ward, at an anti-Israel encampment at the University of Chicago.

Sigcho-Lopez was seen speaking at the encampment at the university on Monday.

Sigcho-Lopez has previously faced criticism from several Chicago aldermen and veterans after he was captured on video speaking at a rally in March where the American flag was burned, according to CBS News.

Link

Fifth Column

Gaza campus protests spread to Chicago high schools, alarming Jewish students

2024-05-03

It should alarm more than just the Jewish students.

[IsraelTimes] Half a dozen high schools allow hundreds of students to briefly skip class for sit-ins, with many then marching to encampments at nearby universities where they are embraced

Hundreds of students held sit-ins at Chicago public high schools in solidarity with Paleostinians in Gazoo
Islamic Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response. In October of 2023 Gazooks belonging to Hamas invaded Israel, killed over a thousand people, raped a bunch of women. Then they bitched and moaned about genocide when their butts handed to them in the entirely justified retaliation.
on Wednesday, as anti-Israel protests trickled down from the college campuses that they’ve upended in recent weeks.

Several dozen students were seen participating in the demonstrations at each of half a dozen high schools, where some Jewish students said the demonstrations — and the schools’ decisions to allow them — left them feeling unsafe.

"I learned in the early months of high school that if you don’t fit with the majority ideology, people will only see you as one aspect and won’t like you. I’ve lost many lifelong friends this year for being a proud Jew," said Jones College Prep senior Mira Rosenblum during a presser with local Jewish leaders in Chicago.

Rosenblum accused her school’s administration of ignoring antisemitism. While her request to hold a vigil after Hamas
Hamas

...one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
’s October 7 onslaught was denied, Jones allowed hundreds of students to participate in a January walk-out along with other Chicago public schools calling for a ceasefire, the teen claimed. Rosenblum said that she was subsequently "doxxed and called anti-black and Islamophobic for filing a complaint against the student leaders who compared themselves to Jewish rebels fighting against Nazi Germany."

Jones College Prep did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"When I see all of this anti-Zionism, it really feels like antisemitism," Jones freshman Max Rubenstein told ABC 7. "At least all the Jewish students are a little uneasy when they see this large-scale protest."

"Anyone who is antisemitic and calls themselves pro-Paleostinian is not pro-Paleostinian," a Jones protest organizer, who was identified only as Atticus, told the network.

"While we support students’ constitutional right to free expression, harassment, discrimination, and bias-based harm have no place in our school community and will not be tolerated," Chicago Public Schools said in a statement.

Explaining the impetus for the day’s sit-ins, Atticus said, "We wanted to show our support to growing encampments around the country, including Northwestern, Columbia and general protest for Paleostinian genocide."

While the sit-ins took place without any reported incidents, the university campus protests Atticus cited have led to hundreds of arrests, including some 300 anti-Israel Lions of Islam who ~~violent~~ mostly peacefully took over a building at Columbia University. At the University of Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, Los Angeles, dueling groups of pro-Paleostinian and pro-Israeli protesters squared off in ugly fistfights that led to several injuries on Wednesday.

The university protests have mushroomed across the country, with organizers pledging to remain in tents on campus quads until their schools sever all academic and financial links to Israel. Administrators have been forced to decide between calling in police to rein in violators, which risks calling more attention to the cause, and cutting deals with them, infuriating US politicians and Jewish organizations.

Until this week, though, the encampments were limited to college campuses. Chicago has seen the largest number of high schoolers joining their older peers, but similar sit-ins were reported in Austin, Texas, and Seattle, Washington. A New Jersey sit-in scheduled for last week was reportedly canceled after a pair of county commissioners demanded that the district’s superintendent intervene.

At Walter Payton College Preparatory High School, media was not allowed inside as the sit-in took place, but participants could be seen through the building’s windows.

The group was seated on the floor facing a student leader who read off information regarding the Israeli-Paleostinian conflict, provided tips on how to demonstrate and taught pro-Paleostinian chants they should expect to hear and echo.

Chicago Public Schools issued a guidance for the day’s protests that allowed them to extend for 30 minutes, but the sit-in at Jones lasted twice as long, according to one parent of a student there. The rallies were organized by Chicago Youth For Justice.

After the sit-ins, many of the participating students proceeded to march to nearby "Gaza solidarity encampments" that were established earlier this week at DePaul University and the University of Chicago.

High schoolers were embraced upon their arrival, with one of the Jones students given the opportunity to lead hundreds at the University of Chicago in a chant of "Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. The very model of probity....
’s sending bombs killing children and their moms!"

At DePaul, Lincoln Park High School students joined college students in a traditional Native American circle dance in the middle of the quad, which was filled with tents and Paleostinian flags.

"That was to remind us that as indigenous people, we are united in liberation," one of the college protest organizers declared at the end of the song, to applause from the high school visitors.

Another organizer took the mic to report that he had just come from a meeting with DePaul stakeholders who refused to accept the protesters’ demands.

"Everyone here on this squad right now is staying here and is not moving until this disgusting university divests from these genocidal corporations," he shouted to cheers from the hundreds present.

"Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest!" they chanted repeatedly.

High schoolers then joined their college-aged peers in making signs that were hung on the fence surrounding the DePaul quad.

"Netanyahu is a modern-day Hitler and Biden is his b****," read one.

Another featured a Marvel cartoon captioned "Magneto hates Zionists!"

One student was seen putting up a sign she made that read "No pride in genocide."

Approached by a passerby who asked her if she knew that queer people are marginalized and targeted in the West Bank and Gaza, the masked student replied that she was not aware of this but added, "No one is free until everyone is free" before finishing zip-tying the sign and scurrying away.

At the presser held by Jewish community leaders several miles away, the Jewish United Fund’s Jane Charney demanded that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) clamp down on the sit-ins.

"How are CPS leaders going to ensure that Jews are not harassed and are able to be present in their schools in the fullness of their identities? What consequences will be meted out to those who use antisemitic language? How will teachers and students be trained to understand the American Jewish experience and our deep connection to Israel? CPS has been silent on all of these questions," Charney lamented.

"So far, we have seen not much beyond available ’processing spaces’ for Jewish students and repeated appeals that students abide by the norms of the Student Code of Conduct — the very same student code of conduct that prohibits sit-ins," she said, adding that Jewish clubs have been urged not to campaign for the release of hostages, while the January ceasefire walk-out was tolerated.

"This hypocritical and selective enforcement of campus rules and capitulation to mob rule sends a clear message to Jewish students and their families that our safety and our ability to be present at our schools in the fullness of our identity is not important."

Link

-Great Cultural Revolution

Survey: Two-Thirds Of Elites Say There's Too Much Freedom In America

2024-01-20

[Federalist] The nation’s ruling class holds deeply authoritarian opinions widely divorced from the rest of the American electorate, finds a survey out this week. It found nearly 60 percent of American "elites" think there is too much individual freedom in America. Meanwhile, nearly 60 percent of registered voters have the exact opposite opinion, reporting the United States has too much top-down control, limiting liberty.

The study, titled "Them Vs. U.S," defined the American "elite" as "having a postgraduate degree, a household income of more than $150,000 annually, and living in a zip code with more than 10,000 people per square mile." Such people account for about 1 percent of Americans. The study also examined a sub-sample of the 1 percent who graduated from Ivy League schools or other name-brand institutions such as Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.

Link

-Short Attention Span Theater-

Many cities across the United States could become ghost towns by 2100

2024-01-16

BLUF: Blue cities will continue the trend of driving away legal residents, while cities in red states will continue to gain.

[UPI] Many cities across the United States could become ghost towns by 2100, according to new research published Thursday.

"Close to half of the nearly 30,000 cities in the United States will face some sort of population decline," researchers from the University of Chicago in Illinois wrote in a journal article published in Nature Cities.

Major cities in the Northeast and Midwest are already slowly losing population. While cities in the South and West regions are experiencing a population increase, some major cities in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee are slowly depopulating, the researchers found.

Cleveland, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh could see depopulation of 12 to 23 percent by 2100 while cities like Louisville, New Haven and Syracuse -- not currently showing declines - likely could soon.

"You might see a lot of growth in Texas right now, but if you had looked at Michigan 100 years ago, you probably would have thought that Detroit would be the largest city in the U.S. now," Sybil Derrible, one of the researchers, told Scientific American.

The study briefly looked at possible causes for these population changes, from the effects of an aging population to changes in the economy, wages and access to transportation -- as well as things like climate change and similar factors.

"In the Northeast and Midwest, urban cities with lower median household income are more likely to experience depopulation over time," the study authors wrote.

"Such trends could exacerbate socioeconomic challenges experienced by lower-income households in these regions, given that population decline can create affordability concerns with infrastructure services."

And then they’ll leave, too.

Link

-Great Cultural Revolution

More than Anti-Semitism: We are All Targeted

2023-11-01

[AmericanThinker] The wave of alleged "pro-Palestinian" demonstrations whose slogans embrace the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist group are routinely denounced as anti-Semitism. Certainly, the brutality of the attacks by Hamas on October 7, which were directed at civilians including the beheading of babies, expressed genocidal hatred. And chants by misnamed "antiwar" protesters on college campuses and in the streets to "gas the Jews" and wipe Israel off the map "from the river to the sea" are also genocidal threats. But what has triggered these actions is more complex than anti-Semitism and broader in ambition.

The Department of State has a section on its website dedicated to defining anti-Semitism and presenting examples. One of the most common is "Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations." This leads to defining Jews are being "them" rather than "us" and justifying actions against them as aliens. Closely related is "the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions." So, they are hostile aliens. There are clearly elements of both in the current protests and in the ideologies that have generated the protests. This is true, sadly, even in some mainstream venues such as "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by professors Stephen Walt (Harvard University) and John J. Mearsheimer (University of Chicago). This accusation is made to advance the authors’ campaign for an isolationist foreign policy which they see the alleged Israeli lobby as thwarting by keeping us engaged in foreign wars. There is a long dark history behind this argument.

J. A. Hobson in his seminal 1902 book Imperialism: A Study alleged that Jewish bankers were behind Western expansion across the world and were the only ones who gained by war because they financed what came to be called the "military-industrial complex." As late as 1938, when Nazi Germany was conducting its pogrom leading to the Holocaust, Hobson’s new edition still accused "men of a singular and peculiar race" of being the main element of "the central ganglion of international capitalism." Like Walt and Mearsheimer, Hobson was using the defamation of Jews as a means to an end, in his case the overthrow of capitalism. And it is this tactic that expands anti-Semitism into a threat that menaces all of us. It assails the modern world created by the vigorous and innovative economic system of capitalism, bounded and guided by the values and energy of western civilization. If Jews were once attacked for being outside society, they are now being attacked for being the vanguard of society. And in the Middle East, Israel is called a "Crusader State" established as an outpost of the West.

Student activists and the faculty members who have filled their heads with this mush (to use Rush Limbaugh’s polite term for what we really know originates from where the sun don’t shine) have no direct interest in the Israeli-Hamas (Iranian) conflict. So why would they choose against Israel, a democratic society with liberal values allied with the country within which they live? Is it pure ignorance, like the Harvard group "Queers for Palestine" which does not seem to realize that under Palestinian law, being homosexual is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and in Hamas-ruled Gaza, by death? Or has Israel simply been assigned a role in a larger ideological drama: the domestic war against western values and success?

The success of the West in creating the modern world, first in Europe and then by extension, pollination, and imitation around the globe, is undeniable. The original Marxist notion that it would become unbearable for the vast majority of exploited workers has proven to be nonsense as living standards have risen to heights undreamed up before the wave after wave of Industrial Revolutions. The leftist vision of despair has manifested itself far more often in areas that tried to substitute intellectual theory for this real-world experience. The evolution of China is the most spectacular case of a land with a rich heritage being driven into the ground by the Marxist radicalism of Mao Zedong. Yet, despite its brutality, Julia Lovell has shown how "Maoism" was held in high regard by leftists everywhere, including in American universities. Post-Mao reformers adopted a form of state capitalism which generated rapid growth in national capacity and personal wealth even if it adopted only part of the Western model.

...The intellectual attack is no longer based on claiming they could do better. It is now based on claiming our success is immoral, the result of slavery at home and imperialism overseas; and with the sin of climate change recently added to the list. The charge that Israel is a "settler colony" is the tip of the iceberg in this campaign as the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other affluent remnants of empire also fit this description.
They think they can use Islam. That's on par with "Queers for Palestine".

Link

-Lurid Crime Tales-

At least 14 people were shot leaving three dead in Chicago

2023-10-16

[GEO.TV] At least three people were confirmed dead in a number of shooting incidents in reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown

...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...
over the weekend where 14 people sustained gunshot wounds, according to local officials.

Chicago police said that two people were fatally shot in two different shooting incidents on the West Side early Sunday.

At least one was declared deceased after sustaining a bullet injury in the University Village neighbourhood.

Initially, the person was transported to the hospital where his condition was declared critical, however, he later departed this vale of tears in the Stroger Hospital, police said.

Local media reports indicated that officers were informed about four males running from the scene after the shooting at the victim's vehicle.

There is no additional information available regarding arrests and identification of the suspects.

The police also said that the person was shot in the Heart of Chicago neighbourhood.

City authorities noted that officials responded to a call of shots fired in the 1900 block of South Paulina Street and found a 21-year-old man on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds around 12:50am.

He sustained gunshot injuries on his neck and body and was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was declared deceased.

According to witnesses, an SUV was seen speeding away shortly after the shooting.

In another incident, at least two people were maimed Saturday during a funeral service in the Gage Park neighbourhood on the Southwest Side.

Officials noted that a 72-year-old woman and a 32-year-old man were shot at about 4:40pm near Emanuel's Chapel Funeral Home, 5112 S. Western Avenue.

Police said that also on Saturday, a security guard was critically injured in a shooting on Chicago's South Side.

The shooting took place in the West Chatham neighbourhood's 0-100 block of West 79th Street at about 4:25pm, police said. The guard was shot on the CTA Red Line, before fleeing the scene.

The victim sustained wounds in the neck area and was transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center at death's door.

Police said the suspected shooter was later taken into custody in the nearby 7900 block of South Michigan Avenue.

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Home Front: Politix

Jonathan Turley Calls Barring Trump From Ballot ‘The Single Most Dangerous Constitutional Theory' Ever

2023-08-23

[Daily Caller] George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said efforts to block former President Donald Trump using the 14th Amendment were "the single most dangerous constitutional theory" he had seen.

An article by William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St Thomas slated to be published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review suggests that Trump may be ineligible to run for president in 2024 due to his efforts to contest the 2020 election. A similar effort to disqualify then-Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina for allegedly supporting the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol building was revived by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in May 2022, according to the American Bar Association Journal.

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-Short Attention Span Theater-

Who's the Real Barack Obama? Things Are Finally Becoming Clearer

2023-08-12

[PJ] Who is Barack Obama? You’d think a guy who’s penned three memoirs and is the subject of several authorized and unauthorized biographies would be an open book, but he isn’t, as most sentient Americans know. But now we’re learning more.

A recent story in Tablet Magazine by David Samuels, which includes an interview with one of Obama’s biographers, David J. Garrow, gives us some clues about America’s first half-black, half-white president and why he has meticulously hidden details of his life from the American people.

Basically, Barack Obama fantasized about gay sex and was a social-climbing, wanna-be billionaire who loathed his real-life story. Obama carefully refashioned a new character named Barack Obama into a carefully curated creature whose reputation the real Obama and his acolytes continue to tend with the scrupulousness of a bonsai master.

Many of these things have been whispered about the man since he came onto the American political scene. Those who said it out loud were largely dismissed. And, as Garrow acknowledges, an incurious media didn’t want to be that guy who asked too many questions because they’d be called racist.

Only one person ever bothered to look up the love of Obama’s life, Sheila Miyoshi Jager. They were together for years and lived together. "I mean," Garrow told Samuels, "one would think that there’d be a journalist in America who would go look at the student directory in the University of Chicago Library in 2008." Garrow jokes, "Yeah, we’re looking for the Black guy’s white girlfriend." Samuels adds, "I mean, why go through all that trouble to be labeled a racist and lose your job?"

Garrow tracked down Jager, whom Obama asked to marry twice. She claims to have dumped him over the issue of the cavalier statements from an anti-Semitic friend. Jager’s dad’s parents were members of the Dutch Resistance and hid a Jewish child for three years during the Holocaust.

If Obama speaks of Jager at all, which he barely did in his first big book, "Dreams From My Father," a book labeled "historical fiction" by Garrow—"Oh God, did that infuriate him"—it is Obama who dumped her. When Garrow spent eight hours interviewing Obama, the only off-limits topic was his father.

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-Lurid Crime Tales-

Mafia-style shooting at Chicago gas station caught on video as 3 suspects open fire in broad daylight

2023-08-09

[Blaze] Three suspects shot and killed a man whom they also reportedly hit with a car at a gas station in Chicago in a brazen daytime shooting.

A small memorial was left by family members for 31-year-old Anton Benoit after he was shot and killed in a gang-style shooting at a Shell gas station in Chatham, a neighborhood in Chicago. Chatham is located on the south side and has a population of approximately 32,000.

Several different angles of the shooting were shown by ABC 7, and gas station surveillance video showed three men get out of a black Dodge Durango and empty their weapons toward Benoit. All three men got back into the vehicle and drove away.

Local outlet WGN9 said that in addition to the shooting, Benoit was also hit by the SUV.

The victim was seen at the first gas pump around 4:10 p.m. on July 26 and was shot several times before being taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center. He was later pronounced dead at the hospital.

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