news

"Contractor" hired to paint over pro Palestine mural assults protestors with paint.

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/crime/2024/05/10/professor-richard-heyman-ut-austin-pro-palestine-protest-arrested-fired-interfering-police/73639778007/

The charging document notes that Heyman broke the trooper's "state-issued bike bell," which costs $62.

And through the grapevine I've heard at least one student received notification from campus police that they are banned from campus with no mention of exceptions for educational reasons. It seems they are planning to suspend or expel at least some students.

US & Friends are complaining a lot about China subsidizing their EV industry, so I tried to look up what those subsidies are, but it seems like no one really knows any specifics? Maybe I'm just bad at searching for information, but I couldn't really find much at all about what kinds of subsidies they're supposedly using, and how they're different from the subsidies the Western countries are handing out to their own industries. It looks to me like they're just mad coz bad at free market competition.

Half of Gaza water sites damaged or destroyed, BBC satellite data reveals

July 2023:

An increasing number of countries are repatriating gold reserves as protection against the sort of sanctions imposed by the West on Russia, according to an Invesco survey of central bank and sovereign wealth funds published on Monday. The financial market rout last year caused widespread losses for sovereign money managers who are "fundamentally" rethinking their strategies on the belief that higher inflation and geopolitical tensions are here to stay.

Over 85% of the 85 sovereign wealth funds and 57 central banks that took part in the annual Invesco Global Sovereign Asset Management Study believe that inflation will now be higher in the coming decade than in the last. Gold and emerging market bonds are seen as good bets in that environment, but last year's freezing of almost half of Russia's $640 billion of gold and forex reserves by the West in response to the invasion of Ukraine also appears to have triggered a shift.

The survey showed a "substantial share" of central banks were concerned by the precedent that had been set. Almost 60% of respondents said it had made gold more attractive, while 68% were keeping reserves at home compared to 50% in 2020.

2024:

Nigeria repatriates its gold.
Ghana repatriates its gold.
Egypt repatriates its gold.
South Africa repatriates its gold.
Cameroon repatriates its gold.

I've seen rumors that other, larger countries are also doing so but these claims are generally not sourced so I won't repeat them. Though, even the above claims are only present in a couple independent media outlets, there's nothing in the MSM. Whether that indicates that these articles are mere rumors or something more insidious going on, I don't know.

Celebrating Eurovision by drinking baileys and frantically reading updates about the small thrust Russia has made towards Kharkiv.

Assistant Chief of NYPD sprayed himself with pepper spray:

https://twitter.com/MerruX/status/1789414670136185139 (last 3 seconds of the clip)
https://twitter.com/peterhvideo/status/1789434275109994813

although as a trans woman, living in the UK is a terrible idea for many reasons, for me it would be extra terrible because a country where I can get a bottle of Buckfast and legally drink it in public would result in me committing every crime imaginable

EDIT: ah fuck, wrong mega. sorry

In UK Labour Party news, they're having a cracking couple of days.

UNITE, the large union happy to work with Labour who were assisting in writing their 'New Deal for Workers' policy has confirmed that it's not just been watered down, but scrapped entirely. They've called the new document a "charter for bad bosses" that defends fire and rehire policies and zero hour contracts. I saw a quote earlier that referred to the provisions for workers as opposed to bosses in it as 'so miniscule it's not worth the meeting'.

Then Labour front bencher Emily Thornberry had an absolute car crash appearance on the BBC when trying to defend her, Starmer, Lammy and co repeatedly saying on camera that Israel had the right to deprive Gaza of 'water, power and food's. She first tries to claim they didn't. Then that they did, but just because it was an emotional time after the events of Oct 7th. Then realises she can't say that so tries to pivot to saying it was just about power. Then when reminded of her own words on tape says it was okay because it was only going to be for a short but unspecified amount of time (which no one said and isn't a defence anyway) and then tries to argue that they were advocating for Israel to do something that is against international law 'but within the law' which is of course, absurd.

And finally, Labour just welcomed a Tory defector to their ranks in the form of Natalie Elphicke. A Boris Johnson loyalist, racist who has spent years engaging in inflammatory racist policy and language about the battle against 'small boat's of refugees, who whole heartedly supports the illegal deportation of people seeking asylum to camps in Rwanda, who has been mulitantly anti-trade union, and who voted to make abortion a criminal offense. Then there's the small fact that her husband was a convicted sex predator who she supported, smeared the victims of, said after his conviction that his only crime was "being attractive to and attracted to women", before she an a handful of other Tory MPs were found to have tried to illegally use their power to pressure the judge in the case.

Welcome to the Labour Party!

Yesterday, around noon, the students of the universities of Amsterdam started an encampment. Already last night the riot police emptied the encampment and arrested a number of the protestors. https://www.dutchnews.nl/2024/05/police-clear-pro-palestine-protestors-from-amsterdam-university/

Israeli business man got assassinated. The group behind it say he was a Mossad agent.

Source - National Post

Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, eastern Rafah evacuations

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Edit

New Gaza euphemism has dropped. "Expanded humanitarian zone," is a polite way of saying "enlarged graveyard."

I would absolutely love to know the exact conversation between the French ambassador and the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Liberal "he's just the president; he's totally powerless and his hands are tied", but this time for...yeah, I kid you not, policing and the crack down on journalists. /u/PronoiarPerson in /r/ACAB: "Biden isn’t king...."

Hamas has reportedly accepted the ceasefire proposal.

this is a limited time ceasefire in exchange for the hostages I think?

IOF goon got owned so hard by a sniper he almost got ignited in flames. But seriously, how are the rifles doing that?
https://twitter.com/IranMilitaryNet/status/1789003111945658857

Switzerland won Eurovision

Children killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 2000 until today

Surely it’s go time for Hezbollah now that Rafah has been invaded right? Is there any actual trigger for “go time”? Are they just going to keep trying to slowly boil the frog of Israel as they wipe out all of Palestine? Like fucking GO

A small breakdown of student protests in The Netherlands:

Monday

Amsterdam: On Monday May 6th students and teachers at the UVA, VU and AUC barricaded a part of the UVA university terrain and set up an encampment to demand their institutions to break their ties with Israel.

15 Counter protesters entered the terrain in the evening with torches to threaten the protesters and to entice the police to break down the encampment. The counter protesters were quickly disarmed and chased out of the encampment. A video of a pro Palestine protester is going around X/Twitter where he beats a counter protester with a wooden plank, politicians are sharing this video as an example of antisemitism and aggression by the protesters, ignoring the fact that the man that was beaten created a very dangerous situation prior by running around with a torch in a crowd of people. There is another video going around where a pro Palestine protester burns an Israeli flag which he supposedly stole from one of the counter protesters.

After the altercation the protests continued on peacefully. Around 3:30 am the riot police broke down the barricades and arrested around 150 protesters. There are videos of riot police beating students who are running away or sitting down in a human chain. The police in general looked very agitated while making the arrests and were not holding back on their aggression.

Tuesday

Amsterdam: In a reaction to the videos of police violence being used against peaceful protesters, students and employees of UVA organised a new protest on Tuesday to demand the board of UVA (who ordered the riot police to intervene) to resign. Thousands of people marched through the city during the day, and a few hundred set up a new encampment and stayed overnight. They also occupied one of the university buildings. This time the UVA did not order the police to intervene. On Wednesday morning the UVA board has agreed to have a conversation with the protesters.

Utrecht: Inspired by the encampment in Amsterdam, students of Utrecht University set up their own encampment on university terrain on Tuesday May 7th to demand their university to cut their ties with Israel. There were no altercations until 23:00 when the police was ordered by the UU board to arrest the about 50 protesters that refused to leave. There are videos in which the police is beating protesters who are holding the gate to the encampment, and dragging protesters across the ground to the arrest bus.

Other universities in the country had protests as well on Tuesday, but there the protests were ended early in agreement with the university boards.

You can follow the Amsterdam and Utrecht encampments on instagram: @amsterdam.encampment @encampment.uu More student protests are expected today and during the week

And as always: Death to "America".

Al Mayadeen English - Time, Space, and the Will

Those who have a connection to the land, and who know its every intimate corner will always have the advantage, even in the face of imperialist terror

Journalist Antony Lowenstein wrote a book called “The Palestine Laboratory'', which details how the Zionist entity uses Palestine as a testing ground for their weapons which they sell to other merchants of death worldwide. In this article, I want to flip this laboratory analogy on its head, by showing how Palestine is where 21st-century guerilla warfare is being developed strategically and tactically. First, there will be a survey of a few 20th-century guerilla warfare tacticians such as Mao and Vo Nguyen Giap, who laid the ground for the Palestinian fedayeen of the 1960s and 1970s. Then, a piece of writing from the martyr Basel al Araj titled Live Like a Porcupine, Fight Like a Flea will be analyzed alongside the actions of resistance factions against the Zionist garrison state.

In reference to the advances of the Vietnamese People’s Army against the French and American imperialists, General Vo Nguyen Giap argued that “in the face of an enemy as powerful as he is cruel, victory is possible only by uniting the whole people within the bosom of a firm and wide national front based on the worker-peasant alliance”. While General Giap is undoubtedly a master tactician of the previous generation, the rank and file of the people’s army showed how correct his analyses are in practice. The question of land remains the decisive factor in planning and executing guerilla warfare.

Those who have a connection to the land, and who know its every intimate corner will always have the advantage, even in the face of imperialist terror. The Vietnamese People’s Army–under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh and General Giap–used the terrain to set traps for imperialist troops, but also to be able to mesh with the masses of workers and peasants. The types of traps used included false floors with snake pits underneath, nets to corral foreign troops into ambushes, spike traps that injured imperialist troops and sent them to the injured reserve. The point was never to confront the enemy face-to-face and inflict massive casualties, but to wear them out, spread them thin, and expose their barbarity. This also included nationwide programs of patriotic education and organization towards national unity and independence. General Giap continues: “Guerilla war is the war of the broad masses…is the enemy strong? One avoids him. Is he weak? One attacks him…there is no fixed line of demarcation, the front being wherever the enemy is found”.

Besides the uses of time and space, the will of the Vietnamese people in their revolutionary war was quite a decisive factor against imperialist troops far from their homes. In the words of Ho Chi Minh: “It was patriotism…that inspired me. You will kill ten of us, we will kill one of you, but in the end, you will tire of it first. Remember, the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability”. The question of supplying weapons in a hostile environment was also a key struggle. General Giap points out that this was mainly done through acquiring arms as ‘war booty’ and then training in their use for the next battle. This strategy is one which was exemplified in Operation Al Aqsa Flood, as discussed later. Mao Zedong and the People’s Liberation Army are another example of 20th century guerilla warriors who struck great blows against world imperialism.

Like Vietnam, China’s PLA were very inspirational to the Palestinian fedayeen. Many photos can be found of PFLP commandos engaged in study sessions of Mao’s Red Book. In modern China, author Cixin Liu’s gripping sci-fi series “The Three Body Problem” pits humanity against an invading alien force who compares humans to bugs due to our relative technological inferiority. It is only when the humans realize that bugs have never been eradicated despite anyone’s efforts that their intergalactic guerilla warfare gains potency and vitality. On guerilla warfare, Mao says: “the enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue”. The Palestinian martyr-intellectual Basel al Araj terms this ‘the flea war’.

Al Araj seamlessly weaves together an ecological analysis of the porcupine and the flea with a political-economic analysis of guerilla warfare in his piece Live Like a Porcupine, Fight Like a Flea. In regards to the flea, Al Araj points out that fleas do not kill their host through biting them and making them anemic, but rather the flea exhausts the host and spreads them thin physically and psychologically. As for the porcupine, the author describes this animal as one which is popular in Palestinian folklore, “[Palestinians] describe it as a strange creature; it cries and wails like humans, it has hopes and wishes. It's been likened to humans in that when upset, it directs its spikes towards predators in an attempt to strike them”. As for the defenses of the porcupine, beyond its spikes, Al Araj highlights that “porcupines are night animals that live underground in relatively large holes that connect to a network of tunnels, where it also creates rest spots.

The porcupine uses various techniques to get in and out of its hole”. In a world-historical sense, then, we can see that the Palestinian resistance is advancing the theory and practice of guerilla warfare for the 21st century. In the absence of jungle or forested mountains in Gaza, the resistance has tunneled underground, like the porcupine, and have created an entire network of tunnels which bypass enemy positions and allow for the use of time and space to our people’s advantage.

The tunnels of the resistance allow for the advancement of the ‘flea war’, whereby Hamas, PIJ, or PFLP commandos can attack over a large surface area while remaining in small units. This has done immense damage materially and psychologically to the Zionist enemy, especially since October 7th. This is evidenced by Gaza being littered with Merkavas and Zionist APCs which are no longer in use. In regards to General Giap’s insistence on the importance of ‘war booty’, time and evidence have shown that Operation Al Aqsa Flood was so successful in part because there were many Hamas units disguised as Zionist troops and using Zionist armaments which caused confusion among Zionist ranks. Palestinians have also reverse engineered the missiles dropped on Gaza, so unwittingly, the Zionists arm the revolutionary forces.

In the West Bank as well, the actions of groups like Lion’s Den and the Jenin Brigades express another expression of the ‘flea war’ whereby Zionist troops are lured into mazes of alleys, harassed and corralled by youth with stones and Molotov cocktails until they arrive at a set location where they are ambushed by light, mobile infantry forces.

This intimate relationship and collaboration between the resistance and the people is crystalized in the concept of the popular cradle. Not only is there a deep connection between the masses and the revolutionaries in practice, but we can see in the slogan of PIJ the importance of immaterial factors: “Islam as the starting point, jihad as the means, and the liberation of Palestine as the goal”. In a deeply religious society, Islam animates revolutionaries to fight against the “taghut” (the oppressor).

The will of the Palestinian people for national liberation and self-determination is expressed through the society-wide resistance to colonial occupation and genocide. These immaterial factors aredecisive, according to General Giap, Mao Zedong, and Basel Al Araj. The victories in guerilla warfare come at a huge cost, and while I will refrain from romanticizing warfare, it is sufficient to say that Palestine is where guerilla war is being theoretically and practically developed in the 21st century after the failures of pitched battles against the Zionists and their imperialist sponsors in 1948, 1967, and 1973.

Much like Vietnam, Palestine has powerful friends who provide aid. Iran not only supplies the resistance with weapons and open source blueprints to produce weapons domestically, but as of April 14th, provides a steadfast ally, willing to attack the Zionists and keep the flame of liberation alight. While Vietnam injured the imperialist war machine, Palestine will bury it.

Unhinged Zionist attempts to steal Palestinian flag from anti-Zionist Jew:
https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1787604077678841899

US Crackdown on Pro-Palestinian Campus Protests Denounced

The American Association of University Professors condemned the militaristic response to student activism.

The recent raid on pro-Palestinian encampments on U.S. college campuses and arrests of over 2,400 students by police have drawn sharp criticism from various sides in the United States.

"We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the heavy-handed, militaristic response to student activism that we are seeing across the country," said a recent statement by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

Too many cowardly university leaders are responding to largely peaceful, outdoor protests by inviting law enforcement in riot gear to campus and condoning violent arrests, said the statement, which was signed by over 50 chapters at various universities.

According to the latest tally by The Associated Press, over 2,400 protesters have been arrested since April 17 on over 45 U.S. campuses nationwide.

The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), an academic publication, said it is "horrified and angered to learn of the assault and arrests," noting that "police violence against peaceful protesters on college campuses has become an alarming trend in the last two weeks."

"We denounce police brutality and the militarization of campuses sanctioned by institutional leaders," said MERIP in a recent statement.

In particular, the police in New York City have made over 450 arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses since April 17.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is seen as the face of the crackdown on student protests, defended the arrests by stressing the role of outside agitators and the need to end the threat to academic life.

"We condemn the use of militarized police force against students in the strongest possible terms and affirm their right to assemble peacefully," said Ana Maria Archila, a director of the New York Working Families Party, in a recent post on social media.

"This is a shameful day in our city's history, and one that will not be forgotten," said Archila, referring to the crackdowns on students at Columbia University and City College of New York protesting the mass killing in Gaza.

There are no outside agitators in the fight against injustice and everybody with a conscience and a heart for the people has a right and a responsibility to join the fight and to stop injustice, said Carl Dix, a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, in a rally on Saturday.

These recent interferences and threats are part of an ongoing partisan, political attack intended to dismantle U.S. higher education and make its institutions beholden only to corporate, political and private interests, warned the AAUP's statement.

The AAUP called on institutional leaders to reinstate student organizations shut down in recent months for political activity, drop charges against peaceful protesters, keep armed law enforcement off campuses, and uphold fundamental freedoms for students and faculty.

Coming on the heels of the Calgary, Alberta encampment dismantling: cops at the university of Alberta in Edmonton have also cleared the encampment located there.

Police raided at dawn when most people had gone home, approx 25 people were at the camp at the time and a handful of arrests.

Someone posted a video about boycotting Eurovision on /r/BreadTube. The video is full of "why won't they ban Israel when they RIGHTFULLY banned Russia?!" and "people RIGHTFULLY booed Russia" and shit (will have to watch out for Brigitte Empire, who I thought was better than that). I was just going to remove it, but I thought I'd test out whether people have progressed on their view of Russia and Ukraine. So I commented with what should honestly be extremely obvious stuff to any leftist and a good number of progressive liberals who have escaped the worst of the foreign policy propaganda:

If anyone should have been banned for the war in Ukraine, it is Ukraine. Non-stop war crimes against the people in Donbass for almost a decade is pretty close to the Israel/Palestine situation, in fact...at least the slower burn of that genocide prior to Oct 7, in any case. Or, of course, the U.S. which precipitated and enabled the whole thing...but I take it the U.S. doesn't participate anyway.

Or, if you want to go so far as banning countries that generally participate in invasions and war crimes and colonialism and sometimes historically even genocide, Eurovision is going to be a pretty lonely place. If you ban Russia, then you'd damned well better ban the UK, Denmark, France, Spain, Australia (whose genocide is still going, even, much like the U.S.'s), etc. if you want to avoid being an absolute hypocrite. (I'm all for it, but I don't see it happening.)

Anyway, yeah: there's not much reason not to ban Israel from absolutely everything at this point. BDS the fuck out of it. Take Ansar Allah's lead and go further than just halting your own economic activities, even. And absolutely boycott things like Eurovision when they won't.

If the participants wanted to divest themselves from the genocide and actively denounce Israel while they participate, I could see an exception being made. But, of course, they'd never be welcome home without handcuffs, so someone had better be willing to offer them asylum afterward.

Anyway, instant down-vote still, but not nearly as heavily as I expected. is incapable of seeing Western hypocrisy, even when you ban all the liberal dipshits who actually comment with their nonsense.

Reddit post
YouTube video

Ms USA resigned recently, something that's never happened before. Her resignation letter contained a coded message reading I AM SILENCED HIP.

HIP are the initials of the director of the pageant.

A few months ago, control of the Ms USA Instagram account was taken from her, also atypical.

Something is up, is she anti-zionist?