Cedric's Big Mix: 2024-04-28

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN & ANN'S MEGA DUB & THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS & THE COMMON ILLS -- THE KOOL AID TABLE

ADULTERER KRISTI NOAM IS FACING BACKLASH OVER REVEALING IN HER NEW BOOK THAT SHE KILLED HER 14-YEAR-OLD PUPPY CRICKET -- SHOT IT DEAD.

"YEAH, I DID IT," SHE BOASTED TO THESE REPORTERS -- MUST CREDIT BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN & ANN'S MEGA DUB & THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS & THE COMMON ILLS -- "AND I'D DO IT AGAIN! I HATED THAT DOG. I REALIZED I HAD TO PUT HER DOWN."

NOAM THEN BEGAN LAUGHING. THESE REPORTERS ASKED WHAT WAS SO FUNNY?

SHE REPLLIED, "I JUST REMEMBERED HOW MY DAUGHTER KENNEDY GOT HOME AFTER AND WAS ALL 'HEY, WHERE'S CRICKET? WHERE'S CRICKET?' IT STILL MAKES ME LAUGH. WHERE'S CRICKET?"

TOLD THAT VOTERS MAY BE APPALLED BY THE KILLING, NOAM INSISTED, "IT COULD BE WORSE. I COULD HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT THE TIME I SHOT GRANDMA WHEN SHE BURNED THE SUGAR COOKIES. BUT I JUST WINGED HER."

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Sabreen al-Sakani has passed away. Her life was brief, not even one week. Born last Sunday after her mother was killed, she seemed a 'survivor' of the assault on Gaza. BBC NEWS explains:

Baby Sabreen al-Sakani was delivered by Caesarean section in a Rafah hospital shortly after midnight on Sunday.

Amid chaotic scenes doctors resuscitated the baby, using a hand pump to push air into her lungs.

However she died on Thursday and has been buried next to her mother after whom she was named.

Baby Sabreen was among 16 children killed in two air strikes in Rafah last weekend. All were killed in a bombardment targeting the housing complex where they lived.

[. . .]

Sabreen's mother, also called Sabreen, was seven-and-a-half months pregnant when the Israeli air strike on the al-Sakani family home took place just before midnight on Saturday as she, her husband Shukri and their three-year-old daughter Malak were asleep.

AP also covers the death but gives the baby's name as Sabreen Jouda. Earlier this week, the United Nations noted:

Sabreen al-Sakani: one name among the more than 34,000 people killed in Gaza since 7 October. Sabreen was 30 weeks pregnant when she died after sustaining terrible head injuries in an Israeli airstrike in the south of the enclave.

Thankfully, her baby daughter lived after being delivered by emergency Caesarean section, at a hospital in Rafah last weekend. With more on this story - and the latest on the war in Gaza that was sparked by Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel – UN News’s Daniel Johnson spoke to Dominic Allen, from the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA.

She was thought by some to have been a sign of hope but on Thursday she became another sign of reality, another child dead as a result of the actions of the Israeli government and their never-ending assault on Gaza. Sabreen al-Sakani is one more child in the growing number of over 14,000 dead as a result of the Israeli government.

And yet some wonder why US students are protesting the assault on Gaza. If you're one of those wondering, the many reasons why are staring you in the face if you'd only open your eyes.

Last night, the editorial staff of the student newspaper THE COLUMBIA SPECTATOR observed:

President Shafik, one week ago, you authorized the New York Police Department to clear Columbia’s South Lawn of student protesters. We watched police officers zip-tie and arrest 108 of our friends, classmates, and coworkers. In response, students have mobilized in the hundreds at Columbia and campuses across the country, defending their right to peaceful protest for divestment from Israel. Now, police battalions surround campus, students enter and exit through security checkpoints, NYPD correctional buses circle the block, helicopters drone overhead, reporters probe students for front-page quotes, and communication from the administration has all but disappeared—with the exception, of course, of ominous late-night emails.

Columbia has become a national spectacle. Instead of defending your students’ right to free expression or engaging publicly with activist organizations, you and other administrators are scrambling to save face—granting campus access to select media outlets, the founder of a hate group that is as rabidly Islamophobic as it is antisemitic, and the occasional opportunistic politician—while abandoning the rest of campus. As tensions escalate here and elsewhere—Yale University, Harvard University, New York University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Michigan, and Brown University, to name a few—we question whether you understand the impact of what you have done. President Shafik, this is your legacy: a president more focused on the brand of your University than the safety of your students and their demands for justice.

Her legacy is in tatters and her actions last week, her resorting to lies (the peaceful students were no clear and present danger) and bullying tactics did more to grow the movement than anything else. This will remain her legacy.

What she can't grasp, the US Secretary of State does. AFP quotes Antony Blinken speaking of the campus protests this morning while he was in China, "It's a hallmark of our democracy that our citizens make known their views, their concerns, their anger, at any given time. I think that reflects the strength of the country."

CNN notes, "A wave of pro-Palestinian campus protests is rippling across the US, with hundreds of people arrested at universities throughout the country this week." Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Jennifer Hassan, Richard Morgan and Karin Brulliard (WASHINGTON POST) add, "Arrests at pro-Palestinian protests that expanded Thursday to colleges across the country brought the total number of people detained in a week of demonstrations to more than 500, with officials struggling to quell the unrest by clearing encampments and closing buildings." The US has seen this before. Michael Albert (ZNET) explains:

I went to MIT, class of 1969. It is now 2024 not the late sixties, but rebellion for change is again in the air. I think it is just getting revved up. I can feel it. I’ll bet you can feel it too. And maybe, hopefully, it will not crescendo any time soon but will instead persist. And perhaps, hopefully, it will seek more than immediate changes. And maybe, and I think I can feel this too, it will be much smarter than we were back then, back in 1968.

The rebellious events at Columbia last week have spurred rebellions of students and sometimes others at a rapidly enlarging community of campuses, including at my personally much-despised alma mater, MIT. [Note, I am not unbiased about campus rebellion or about MIT. The former undergirds mass change, over and over. Have at it. The latter is an instance of elite, academic, grossly rotten business as usual. When I was president of MIT’s student body, during steadily growing and intensifying rebellion, among the epithets I used for MIT was “Dachau on the Charles” because of its war research. Some on campus were too literal or too dense to see why I named it thus. For them, I would acknowledge the main difference, which was that MIT’s victims were not local, like Dachau’s—no, MIT’s victims way back then were half a torn-up world away in Vietnam enduring American carpet bombing. And regarding Dachau, MIT’s victims were not hanging like burned out lightbulbs in MIT’s corridors nor lying breathless like fish out of water gassed in MIT’s labs. And now, 56 years later, MIT’s current victims are way off in Gaza enduring Israeli carpet bombing (but with American bombs). They are not being forcefully exiled from MIT’s classes, dorms, playing fields, and clinic—not yet, anyway. My point: history sometimes repeats, sometimes with ironic differences, sometimes with healthy differences.

Phil Helsel (NBC NEWS) reports:

A number of people were arrested at Ohio State University in Columbus after demonstrators refused to leave part of campus Thursday night, a university spokesperson said.

The number of arrests was not immediately available.

“Well established university rules prohibit camping and overnight events. Demonstrators exercised their first amendment rights for several hours and were then instructed to disperse,” spokesman Ben Johnson said in an email.

“Individuals who refused to leave after multiple warnings were arrested and charged with criminal trespass,” he said.

The Columbus Dispatch newspaper reported that its reporters witnessed at least a dozen people being taken into custody.

CBS NEWS adds, "In Philadelphia, more than 100 students at Temple University walked out of class and marched from campus to City Hall, CBS Philadelphia reported. The protesters were also joined by students from Drexel University."

From yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza have rocked campuses from coast to coast over the past week amid an intensifying police crackdown. At the University of Texas in Austin, school officials called in local and state police, including some on horseback, who violently broke up a student encampment on campus. At least 50 people were arrested, including at least one journalist. Some faculty at UT Austin are going on strike today to protest the police crackdown.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University continues a week after over a hundred students were arrested in a failed attempt by the university administration to clear the demonstration. University President Minouche Shafik had said on Tuesday — had set on Tuesday a midnight deadline to reach an agreement on clearing an encampment, but the school extended negotiations for another 48 hours. On a visit to campus Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson called on Shafik to resign.

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: I am here today joining my colleagues in calling on President Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos. As speaker of the House, I am committing today that the Congress will not be silent as Jewish students are expected to run for their lives and stay home from their classes, hiding in fear.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in New York by Sarah King, member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest. She is Jewish, one of the students arrested at the encampment last week who’s now suspended. We’re also joined by Joshua Sklar, a graduate student at University of Texas Austin, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace Austin, who was at Wednesday’s protest.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Josh, there were more than 50 arrests at UT Austin. If you can respond to the House speaker, who’s saying that these encampments around the country are antisemitic and pro-Hamas?

JOSHUA SKLAR: It’s absolutely ridiculous. I was there with a contingent of Jewish students, and we were received very warmly. There were even Jewish Zionists there, and they were not harassed at all. In fact, I would say that they probably felt safer than the majority of protesters.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sarah King, if you could describe what’s happening now at Columbia University and your own position? You were suspended?

SARAH KING: Yes, I was one of the over 100 students who was arrested as part of a peaceful protest in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, and I’m one of the student who’s been suspended, as well, so I’m currently not allowed to be on campus. And I have to say it’s — the camp itself is very beautiful. It’s been a real place of interfaith celebration and solidarity, in support of the people of Gaza, who are now at over 200 days of genocide. But, you know, the threat is really coming from Columbia University, which has sent the police on hundreds of its students who are entrusted to its care.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk, Sarah, about what’s happened, how you got suspended and your treatment? I’ve been talking to a number of Columbia and Barnard students who said that some of them were given 15 minutes to get out of their dorm, and your meal card canceled, as you’re banned from campus, as well.

SARAH KING: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I’m one of the lucky ones, because I live off campus. But many students live in Columbia housing, and so they were evicted from their homes or locked out from their homes, probably illegally in many cases. We’re looking into it. And they lost access to their normal food. I had an undergraduate who is low-income and was staying with me, because she was evicted with no notice and lost access to her meal plan.

And it’s really very concerning the way Columbia uses the threat of — initially it was just — “just,” quote-unquote — the threat of housing, the threat of loss of food to try to — you know, as a cudgel to get students into the correct political line that is best for its pocketbook, its investment portfolio. And now they’re threatening to set the National Guard on us, risking another Jackson State, another Kent State, where students have been killed because the National Guard were set on students. And they’re willing to risk the threat of violence at their hands because we’re not, you know, consistent with what’s best for their board of trustees or for their portfolios.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Sarah, what about your response to Mike Johnson being invited to speak at Columbia University on campus yesterday?

SARAH KING: Yeah. I mean, first, I think it’s shameful that he was allowed there. Like, I myself am not allowed on campus. I’m, you know, one of many talented and promising students with bright futures who have been banned from campus, but Mike Johnson, who is an open racist and white supremacist, along with people like Gavin McInnes, the head of the Proud Boys, they were welcomed on campus yesterday.

And to me, that really tells the story of what’s at stake here, which is that, you know, the students fighting for Palestinian liberation are part of an interracial coalition — so many Jewish students, Muslim students, Black, Brown, Arab students — working together for the cause of freedom, on one side, and then, on the other side, you have political opportunists, like the House speaker, who, you know, will take any excuse they can get to come after that kind of interfaith, multigenerational coalition fighting for freedom. And right now it happens to be under the guise of something like antisemitism. But, you know, there’s no substance to it at all. And I think anybody who came to campus and saw, the worst prosecution that the Jewish students on campus are facing is from Columbia University. We were disproportionately banned by Columbia because so many of us are part of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment trying to prevent a genocide in our name.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Joshua Sklar, wrote a piece in The Austin Chronicle. “We need a ceasefire now,” it was called, the subtitle, “Anti-Palestinian violence is not 'on the other side of the globe.' It’s here in Austin, too.” If you can talk about that and how protesters were treated yesterday? You had riot police on horseback?

JOSHUA SKLAR: Yeah. I think that there’s been this narrative that there’s been rampant antisemitism. And this simply is not the case. The people who are being targeted are Muslim students, Arab students, and especially Palestinian students. Police came in on horseback, and they attacked protesters. I heard from other students that during an earlier part of the protest, they were clearly targeting Brown people and women. I wasn’t there personally, but this is what I heard.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask Sarah King a final question. We have 10 seconds. And that is, 48-hour extension goes ’til tonight. What are the plans? Ten seconds, Sarah.

SARAH KING: You know, I think most of the people at the encampment have already agreed to risk arrest, and they won’t move unless moved by force or until Columbia concedes to our demands, which are for divestment, amnesty and financial transparency.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us, Sarah King, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and Joshua Sklar at UT Austin. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

As Mike has said repeatedly at his site, "I stand with the students." The students have taken action because elected leaders have failed to lead. For over 200 days, this active genocide has taken place and the best the US can offer is Joe Biden say, "I'm not kidding, Israel, you calm down or I'm pulling this car over." Joe does nothing except give the government of Israel -- a corrupt and brutal regime -- millions and billions of US tax dollars -- $26 billion just this week, he just signed it this week. There are no consequences for the War Crimes. Joe continues to turn a blind eye. That's why the students have to lead -- because officials have failed and the body count grows higher and higher each day that this assault continues.

Rather than address that truth, college officials and politicians call for the students to be attacked.

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