The assault on historical memory by the Trump administration is designed to obliterate our shared understanding of reality and whitewash the crimes of the past to whitewash the crimes of the present.
Not to worry because Trump and his minions are really not fascists according to some folks posting on this site. He has been so maligned by the media and the “libs” according to these same folks posting on this site daring to call him a fascist. Well I am here to say, you folks are in for big surprise when you finally figure out who and what Trump truly is and how he intends to destroy the USA. He is a fascist for all intents and purposes along with his being nothing but a criminal conman out to steal everything he can. And that is not to excuse anything the Democrats have done in their own way to destroy the USA.
So how would you define this country during Trump's first term in in office? A democracy, but one that was willing to push the lie of Russia-gate to undermine his presidency? No one was held accountable for that lie that defined him as illegitimate through his four years in office, and now is being repeated with a different theme. What did you think of the press, both mainstream and on the left who were unable to use any sense of objectivity regardless of what he said or did, and maybe it is why he's not in love with our media, and no one should be either. What did you think of Clinton's remarks in regard to his supporters? I mean calling millions and millions of Americans deplorables. Also, what did you think of calling a riot an insurrection in which the doors to the Capital were flung open letting all those "traitors" in through the front door? Of course it was a lie, but it didn't stop them from jailing people even without charges, and many of those were jailed for years. Any problem with Cheney and Kinzinger, the two Republicans chosen by Pelosi to serve on the U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capital, and both of whom hated Trump? What do you think of the CIA wanting a Biden win and even willing to say his son's lap top was Russian disinformation. Of course they had him screwing around with everyone, and even accused him of sexual deviance by having someone go over and pee on the bed Obama and his wife slept on while in Russia. I'm sure all the democrats bullshit had you enthralled during this time, and supported your black and white perception of him.
Trump and his minions are, finally, the emperor and his goals revealed. The corruption of the DNC, Obama's record of 'transparency' having viciously sought out and prosecuted more whistleblowers than all prior president's combined ... and the list goes on. We have never had a true democracy. Most recently the amounts of money, effort and time spent by the Democratic Party to remove Dr Jill Stein from the ballot, keeping her platform removed from the public discourse, etc. is but one more indication of the rot exposed fully by Trump and his cabinet. Those like Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell who violated international an humanitarian law now teach in our universities, along with many from the disgraceful Biden Administration. Biden, Harris, Blinken, Austin and Greenfield - all international criminals. There is a long, disgraceful history of the abuse of power and privilege. We are only seeing the results.
TENS OF THOUSANDS ISRAELI SOLDIERS Entering the US
Why has no one raised the alarm over 23,000 U.S.A. citizens who have gone to Israel to fight in a genocidal war in Gaza? Isn't it illegal to join the military of another country to give your life & loyalty for the political goals of another government? Anti-war protesters in USA are losing jobs, being expelled, kidnapped and deported for being against the Israeli war and ethnic cleansing. Why aren't U.S. Citizens volunteering for the Israeli genocide being tried for treason, or arrested upon returning, or being stopped at the border and sent back to Israel and having their U.S. citizenship revoked? Over 23,000 Americans working for Israel - WHO ARE THEY? They need to be identified and held accountable for their role in Genocide or ethnic cleansing. ICE refuses entry to innocent refugees yet allows murderous militants entry? Criminal! How many other countries like France and Britain are accepting war criminals back into their ranks?
CHEMICAL WARFARE
At Columbia U, on Jan/19/24, two Israel Occupation Force soldiers were identified as two of the perpetrators in a chemical attack on anti-war students. The chemical spray, produced in Israel, is used by the Israeli military IDF on Palestinians to suppress protests against settler terrorists and the Israeli occupation. Both Israelis were current Columbia students. They were wearing keffiyeh disguises to spray protesters with a chemical weapon imported from Israel. Several of their victims were hospitalized for decontamination. Members of Jewish Voice for Peace reported being spat on and harassed by Israeli pro-war on-lookers. The soldier's names were hidden to protect their identity. The Israeli soldier-students weren't arrested for chemical warfare or even assault, but one who was suspended for a few months sued Columbia over his temporary suspension and was awarded almost half a million dollars ($395,000) by Columbia resulting from his assaults on anti-war students. They apparently lied about the chemical spray, characterizing it as a novelty joke item of USA origin and an expression of freedom of speech. What a perversion of justice.
This is an instance of using the US Courts to reward Israeli soldiers using military weapons to attack US students in order to suppress their speech and their protests against genocide and ethnic cleansing. Despite being legal residents, the students are too terrified to fight back - for good reason. This is beyond cynical.
The student, (who deployed chemical spray) according to the document, is a Jewish-Hispanic immigrant who served in the Israeli army and holds both American and Israeli citizenship. A senior at Columbia, he was one of two students suspended by the university until the end of the semester for spraying the protesters at a demonstration on January 17th 2024. Their names are being withheld to protect their identity and protect them from personal criticism.
AI facial recognition software company Betar spokesman Daniel Levy says people on his list were identified using a facial-recognition tool called NesherAI created by Hawila's company, Stellar Technologies, located in his apartment in Brooklyn. The software's name is from the Hebrew word for “eagle.” Demonstrating the software, Hawila allowed the computer code to assimilate the upload of thousands of photos from social media accounts. The software matched a screenshot of a masked protester Hawila photographed at a recent demonstration with publicity photos of a woman who he was then able to identify.
USA GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
Anti-war student arrests: Turkish student, Rumeysa Ozturk, who was studying for her doctorate at Tufts on a Fulbright scholarship with a student visa was surrounded by six government agents on a Somerville street near her home. She was man-handled, hand-cuffed and whisked off in a Gestapo-type operation. She was then secretly taken to a site in a part of the far-reaching USA Gulag Archipelago. Her sin was criticizing Tufts’ response to a student group’s call for the university to divest from Israeli companies.
Alireza Doroudi, a University of Alabama doctoral student originally from Iran, was also detained by ICE. He had been held at a jail, but was transferred to federal custody in Jena, La.
Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia until December, was in his apartment when several ICE agents entered and took him into custody. Khalil was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card,
Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old Columbia University student who has lived in the US since she was 7, filed a suit after immigration agents tried to arrest and deport her for participating in anti-war demonstrations.
HARVARD UNIV
Hedge fund billionaire and Harvard alumni Bill Ackman led the call for the ouster of the Harvard President accusing her of Anti-Semitism. The CEO of Pershing Square is well-known for pressure campaigns, having built much of his wealth by using aggressive propaganda techniques. He called for the names of all the students who signed an anti-war statement (calling on Israel to stop the bombings) so that he and other CEOs could blacklist them from ever being hired by their firms. Ackman had the students faces displayed on trucks around campus labeling the students "anti-Semites." He also sent mailings to everyone in the area naming the Anti-War students. In addition, he hired a helicopter to fly over the area with signs in the sky naming the students. Overkill to crush dissent and support the bombing of Gaza? Ackman said the Harvard Board was worried that if they fired president Gay, it would look like they were kowtowing to him.
UNIV OF PENN
Among the first to call on Elizabeth Magill to resign was Marc Rowan, CEO of private equity giant Apollo Global Management. Rowan is one of the university’s wealthiest donors.
Billionaire Ronald Lauder, another powerful financial backer of school, threatened to do the same if more wasn’t done to fight "antisemitism." Brandeis Center, a Jewish civil rights legal organization, filed civil rights complaints with the US Dept of Education, accusing Penn of nurturing a hostile environment toward Jewish students. Stone Ridge Holdings CEO Ross Stevens, a major donor to Penn, sent a letter to Penn threatening to cost the school approximately $100 million for allowing students anti-war demonstrations.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Columbia President Minouche Shafik resigned after a little more than a year. She's the third female college president to lose her job. Students' protests over how Israel is fighting its war against the Palestinians has exposed cracks in the protection of the right to express an opinion publicly without being penalized or maligned.
New York GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Harvard alumna, was relentless in her condemnation of the women college presidents. Hearing of Shafik's resignation Elise Stefanik said, “THREE DOWN, so many to go.”
A fourth woman, interim college President at Columbia, Katrina Armstrong, has been forced out after seven months. Armstrong’s resignation from Columbia U. comes after the Trump White House called for a ban on masks at campus anti-war protests as part of a list of reforms aimed at cracking down on "rampant antisemitism" that demonstrations against the massive bombing of Palestinians are being cast as.
Fifth woman: tenured Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke is stepping down after 25 years following a university investigation into her comments during an anti-war campus protest on January 2024 involving two IDF Israeli students who sprayed anti-war demonstrators with a chemical made and used in Israel by the IDF to suppress protests in Palestine. In an interview with Democracy Now! Franke claimed that Israeli students who had served in the Israel Defense Forces "have been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus."
Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth; although grilled by Stefanik, was spared ouster by the pro-Israel billionaires.
Reports have indicated that approximately 100 USA black sites exist all over the world, including in countries like Poland, Romania, Thailand, Lithuania, Egypt, Guantanamo, etc. to hide prisoners being held and/or tortured by U.S. military or CIA agents.
Of course of course. But… rather like the endless “My country used to be something but has now changed” posts, one must ask, what took you so long? Not to say that Trump isn’t announcing this publicly in a first timey kind of manner, and he is deservedly our demon du jour but the path was well worn, has been since 1776. After 7 teenage years in the US I wandered into a bookshop on 9/11 1973 in London and all the staff were glued to the telly broadcasting the coup and overthrow of Allende in Chile. No-one in that room was in any doubt who was behind it. Who could live through the desperate Vietnam years and still be fooled? America as a force for good in the world is as real as claiming Colonialism was good for the colonized.
That all “great” powers do this is a yes, absolutely, but why? Or, why do so many believe it for so long? It is either that Western civilization is the greatest brainwasher in human history, has developed a culture this needy of lies, a psychosis we could find a name for: Europanoia. Or a diabolical combination of the two.
I could put a date to the onset of the pathology: 1095, first crusade or the ever popular 1492, that would be much more useful than gleefully pointing at Trump. A pathology evolved, so rancid, I am sorry Chris, in monotheism: the creator of eternal children who must identify with their fictions to get out of bed each morning, whose Deuteronomy roots make glory of genocide, that the path ahead is probably the greatest challenge in history.
Bundled as it is with the climate catastrophe grounded also in the Supremacy of the monotheisms.
The truism that half of any problem is admitting it exists makes me ask when this community thinks this Trumpish revisionism began? Imagining it is his, first, not a continuation run out before us by every administration, pushed by most academics in most schools every day, babbled by Blinken when Hegseth was binging in obscurity, only ever really challenged by Alice Walker, J Baldwin, Toni Morrison, hmmm is ridiculous political self delusion.
Maybe we are lucky Trump is so blatant. I’d say so. But fantasizing he is unique means this nation will never admit what it has done, not uniquely, but has done bigger than Empires previous, in direct line from the formidable fictions of Britain. The admission we need might at last be a revolution, not just the sad and bloated colony it is, and we might proceed with a well earned humility and begin repairing what we have done. Let the reparations, for instance, begin. A good ole Christian concept. On paper.
The scandal is Trump's crudeness, you see. There are genteel ways of doing things; ways understood by properly educated people so unpleasantries like "empire" or "neolib" or "oligarchy" or "war profiteering" need never be mentioned.
The best American scientists worked on the Manhattan project. No need to speak of irradiated Japanese civilians when the point was to establish the U.S. as indisputably the greatest power ever. The //Best and Brightest,// the title of Halberstam's book on the Vietnam war, is an Ivy League guide to pursuing strategic goals in remote parts of the globe. So of course it was revived by subsequent Dem administrations. Simplistic bifurcations like win or lose just do not apply.
The ultimate arrangement was achieved during the Biden administration. (Foolish critics use improper terms like "neolib" plus "neocon.") Free enterprise capitalism guaranteed by military discipline whenever needed. The dream of the now dominant Chicago School of Economics. Its founder, Milton Freedman, supported Pinochet and advised the Chilean government because "democracy interferes with market efficiency." It would have been best, though, had H Clinton not revealed the concurrence of the Ivy D elite with that little "a basket of deplorables" remark. No need to say what the best already know.
I'm with you. And yes......the overthrow of Allende puts the historical trajectory back a few decades....we could look at Kissinger's role in Argentina's dirty war as well.....but truly, America's interference around the world....her terrible belief in her own superior knowledge.........and the clandestine way she does things, so that many well meaning people don't have a clue where anything starts or ends.....
Can make anyone who takes the trouble to know a little history wonder if there is any hope of rehabilitating such a perverse and pervasive phenomena as American military exceptionality. In such a context, many perhaps decide its best not to know...to get back to 'my country right or wrong' and do as we're told and stay asleep.
Being 'woke' is the crime. What's going on in Gaza, the cleansing.
And yes......perhaps Trump's blatancy is a bonus. It's hard to deny his cancerous ego...perhaps it will wake up a few.
I think something really momentous can happen, needs to, it is hinted at in the books they’ve all read but is very unlikely: European shame and admission. I don’t hold my breath. But many of us could walk away. Israel is finished as a virtue center and by association Western civilization. From Blm to metoo, their gluttonous superiority has been challenged and shattering. The posters I was writing on are not able to break free, they are too invested. But the rest of us? I think so.
It's not that many of us don't know...its that they have the power, and the power is military, and not just worshipped by Repugs.
I'm shocked and a bit amused by all the uproar over the chat the fascists invited a journalist to.........but no one questions Amerika's inalienable right to bomb whom ever they choose.....no war declared or anything...
Just drop a few bombs on 'terrorists' wherever, and the majority of Americans worry about the security of the chat, not the war crime of the act.
That country is a military war machine...and has been as long as I've been alive.
Trump wanting to make it all noble and superior and the best thing since sliced bread again........might have more support on both sides of the aisle than many of us imagine.
"Authoritarians promise to replace bias with “objective truth.” But their “objective truth” is about sacralizing our civil religion and leadership cult. "
Liberals do the same thing, but with a different religion and a different cult. Recall, for instance, that god-awful Bridgerton movie where they made King George's wife a black woman.
Keep in mind that Bridgerton was set during the time of the South Sea Bubble, which quite literally was based on trading slaves to Spanish colonies in Latin America. Going off memory, the queen at the time was a sponsor of the (slave-trading) South Sea Company, but again, that is just my memory.
Although I'm a staunch believer in the values of democracy, I have to admit that in cases of total chaos and deep divisions among the society, authoritarianism can be the solution. But, please bring an intelligent true patriot interested in the wellbeing of the whole society, not that gorilla we have at white house.
I can't even pretend to approach Chris' elucidation, so permit me two relatively minor comments:
1) "President Donald Trump’s latest executive order titled “RESTORING TRUTH AND SANITY TO AMERICAN HISTORY” replicates a tactic used by all authoritarian regimes. In the name of countering bias, they distort the nation’s history into self-serving mythology."
Of course the above has been central to the Zionist project as well, from its inception to the present day. Mere coincidence? Both this country and its "greatest ally" (read "partner in crime(s)") spread their scrubbed and conjured up narratives like manure across both their respective domestic scenes and the international realm. One point of intersection between the two is our complicity in the genocide in Palestine.
2) "There is proposed legislation in Congress calling for... the renaming Washington Dulles International Airport to Donald J. Trump International Airport..."
Well, I actually do see some worth in that, something like "truth in advertising", at least the place would bear the name of an out-and-out exemplar of the American Empire, rather than the nearly forgotten Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (after whom it is named) who together with his perhaps even less recalled brother Allen, Director of the CIA , worked more covertly in the shadows of the Empire but were nonetheless key accomplices in the establishment of the post-war world hegemon, if not among its architects. Both were skilled in its dark arts.
How does that line from "The History Boys" go? "History. It's just one bloody thing after another." With the US and Israel, that's literally true.
I wish you would do a talk on how the media is not doing their job regarding Trump
,especially when they do these interview questions. They don’t ask pertinent questions and they don’t follow up on his evasions. For example,they were asking this morning or I don’t know last night on the airplane, did he think having a third term was was OK or something to that effect , and instead of saying well, you know the constitution prohibits that and so how can you even talk about that? That would be too much for them.
It is wonderful to have someone like Chris Hedges defend the values that make America great. We need people like him to fight for what is right. Whether you agree with all of his policies, one can certainly say that his motivations are manifestly for a more moral, fair and decent world for all to live in peacefully. Some would say the same of Donald Trump, and be able to find evidence to support their claim. Naturally, they can't both be right. What I do know for a fact is that both those who support the Hedges position and those who support the Trump position both sincerely believe that they each have the best intentions for the country. Both believe the opposite side is "obviously" wrong. Such is the nature of politics and probably always will be.
"objective facts..." Never mind for the last 100 years we've been living in a post-Einstein and post-Heisenberg universe of relativity and uncertainty. Where what was long assumed to be objectivity turned out to be the viewpoint of privileged Euro and Euro descent white men. Where even traditionalist theologians are now mindful of the perspectives of women, the global South, and Indigenous peoples.
I prefer the outlook of a sticker I was given at a BAAITS (Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits) powwow. It's from an East Bay Ohlone people, the Lisjan, who have a women-led land trust. It reads: REMATRIATE THE LAND.
If you are an alum of any of the schools that are kowtowing to Trump, tell them why you won't donate. If they are under attack, tell them to stand fast.
Well, this is obviously the goal of white supremacists...and it has always been their goal. It's important to remember when public education was a lot less expensive in America. I did a masters in Massachusetts during the Viet Nam era but only learned much later how cheap it was to go to Berkley back then. Ronnie Regan began reversing that affordability and the turning of universities into cash cows for the global elites came to Canadian universities soon after.
A good part of a real education is learning, not just the past, but learning how to think for ourselves, and thereby see past partial truths and supremacist lies. The truly educated people of America are going to have to act, speak up, refuse to allow propaganda to replace truth in the classrooms of the nation.
And that might be harder than I imagine. Because I don't know how far penny pinching and profiteering have got in American schools. Perhaps the authorities are already erasing the horrific stories of all the shootings that from time to time spice up learning in American schools...perhaps the majority of Americans think all is well, in the best and brightest nation on earth.
Up here in Canada, we are starting to wonder how far things have got south of our borders.
Not to worry because Trump and his minions are really not fascists according to some folks posting on this site. He has been so maligned by the media and the “libs” according to these same folks posting on this site daring to call him a fascist. Well I am here to say, you folks are in for big surprise when you finally figure out who and what Trump truly is and how he intends to destroy the USA. He is a fascist for all intents and purposes along with his being nothing but a criminal conman out to steal everything he can. And that is not to excuse anything the Democrats have done in their own way to destroy the USA.
So how would you define this country during Trump's first term in in office? A democracy, but one that was willing to push the lie of Russia-gate to undermine his presidency? No one was held accountable for that lie that defined him as illegitimate through his four years in office, and now is being repeated with a different theme. What did you think of the press, both mainstream and on the left who were unable to use any sense of objectivity regardless of what he said or did, and maybe it is why he's not in love with our media, and no one should be either. What did you think of Clinton's remarks in regard to his supporters? I mean calling millions and millions of Americans deplorables. Also, what did you think of calling a riot an insurrection in which the doors to the Capital were flung open letting all those "traitors" in through the front door? Of course it was a lie, but it didn't stop them from jailing people even without charges, and many of those were jailed for years. Any problem with Cheney and Kinzinger, the two Republicans chosen by Pelosi to serve on the U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capital, and both of whom hated Trump? What do you think of the CIA wanting a Biden win and even willing to say his son's lap top was Russian disinformation. Of course they had him screwing around with everyone, and even accused him of sexual deviance by having someone go over and pee on the bed Obama and his wife slept on while in Russia. I'm sure all the democrats bullshit had you enthralled during this time, and supported your black and white perception of him.
By the way, by any chance were you out their yesterday attacking teslas? Just curious.
Hear here !
Trump and his minions are, finally, the emperor and his goals revealed. The corruption of the DNC, Obama's record of 'transparency' having viciously sought out and prosecuted more whistleblowers than all prior president's combined ... and the list goes on. We have never had a true democracy. Most recently the amounts of money, effort and time spent by the Democratic Party to remove Dr Jill Stein from the ballot, keeping her platform removed from the public discourse, etc. is but one more indication of the rot exposed fully by Trump and his cabinet. Those like Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell who violated international an humanitarian law now teach in our universities, along with many from the disgraceful Biden Administration. Biden, Harris, Blinken, Austin and Greenfield - all international criminals. There is a long, disgraceful history of the abuse of power and privilege. We are only seeing the results.
Designed as a limited democracy only. The Constitution, the US Senate, the power of geography over population.
23,000IsraelSoldiers
TENS OF THOUSANDS ISRAELI SOLDIERS Entering the US
Why has no one raised the alarm over 23,000 U.S.A. citizens who have gone to Israel to fight in a genocidal war in Gaza? Isn't it illegal to join the military of another country to give your life & loyalty for the political goals of another government? Anti-war protesters in USA are losing jobs, being expelled, kidnapped and deported for being against the Israeli war and ethnic cleansing. Why aren't U.S. Citizens volunteering for the Israeli genocide being tried for treason, or arrested upon returning, or being stopped at the border and sent back to Israel and having their U.S. citizenship revoked? Over 23,000 Americans working for Israel - WHO ARE THEY? They need to be identified and held accountable for their role in Genocide or ethnic cleansing. ICE refuses entry to innocent refugees yet allows murderous militants entry? Criminal! How many other countries like France and Britain are accepting war criminals back into their ranks?
CHEMICAL WARFARE
At Columbia U, on Jan/19/24, two Israel Occupation Force soldiers were identified as two of the perpetrators in a chemical attack on anti-war students. The chemical spray, produced in Israel, is used by the Israeli military IDF on Palestinians to suppress protests against settler terrorists and the Israeli occupation. Both Israelis were current Columbia students. They were wearing keffiyeh disguises to spray protesters with a chemical weapon imported from Israel. Several of their victims were hospitalized for decontamination. Members of Jewish Voice for Peace reported being spat on and harassed by Israeli pro-war on-lookers. The soldier's names were hidden to protect their identity. The Israeli soldier-students weren't arrested for chemical warfare or even assault, but one who was suspended for a few months sued Columbia over his temporary suspension and was awarded almost half a million dollars ($395,000) by Columbia resulting from his assaults on anti-war students. They apparently lied about the chemical spray, characterizing it as a novelty joke item of USA origin and an expression of freedom of speech. What a perversion of justice.
This is an instance of using the US Courts to reward Israeli soldiers using military weapons to attack US students in order to suppress their speech and their protests against genocide and ethnic cleansing. Despite being legal residents, the students are too terrified to fight back - for good reason. This is beyond cynical.
The student, (who deployed chemical spray) according to the document, is a Jewish-Hispanic immigrant who served in the Israeli army and holds both American and Israeli citizenship. A senior at Columbia, he was one of two students suspended by the university until the end of the semester for spraying the protesters at a demonstration on January 17th 2024. Their names are being withheld to protect their identity and protect them from personal criticism.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/private-groups-identify-report-student-041123910.html
Stalking the student demonstrators.
AI facial recognition software company Betar spokesman Daniel Levy says people on his list were identified using a facial-recognition tool called NesherAI created by Hawila's company, Stellar Technologies, located in his apartment in Brooklyn. The software's name is from the Hebrew word for “eagle.” Demonstrating the software, Hawila allowed the computer code to assimilate the upload of thousands of photos from social media accounts. The software matched a screenshot of a masked protester Hawila photographed at a recent demonstration with publicity photos of a woman who he was then able to identify.
USA GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
Anti-war student arrests: Turkish student, Rumeysa Ozturk, who was studying for her doctorate at Tufts on a Fulbright scholarship with a student visa was surrounded by six government agents on a Somerville street near her home. She was man-handled, hand-cuffed and whisked off in a Gestapo-type operation. She was then secretly taken to a site in a part of the far-reaching USA Gulag Archipelago. Her sin was criticizing Tufts’ response to a student group’s call for the university to divest from Israeli companies.
Alireza Doroudi, a University of Alabama doctoral student originally from Iran, was also detained by ICE. He had been held at a jail, but was transferred to federal custody in Jena, La.
Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia until December, was in his apartment when several ICE agents entered and took him into custody. Khalil was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/30/columbia-alumni-diplomas-mahmoud-khalil Current student and a friend of Khalil’s, said: “Students are terrified to set foot on campus. I’m one of them, so just the fact that I’m here is scary because [of] the way that our colleagues have disappeared."
Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old Columbia University student who has lived in the US since she was 7, filed a suit after immigration agents tried to arrest and deport her for participating in anti-war demonstrations.
HARVARD UNIV
Hedge fund billionaire and Harvard alumni Bill Ackman led the call for the ouster of the Harvard President accusing her of Anti-Semitism. The CEO of Pershing Square is well-known for pressure campaigns, having built much of his wealth by using aggressive propaganda techniques. He called for the names of all the students who signed an anti-war statement (calling on Israel to stop the bombings) so that he and other CEOs could blacklist them from ever being hired by their firms. Ackman had the students faces displayed on trucks around campus labeling the students "anti-Semites." He also sent mailings to everyone in the area naming the Anti-War students. In addition, he hired a helicopter to fly over the area with signs in the sky naming the students. Overkill to crush dissent and support the bombing of Gaza? Ackman said the Harvard Board was worried that if they fired president Gay, it would look like they were kowtowing to him.
UNIV OF PENN
Among the first to call on Elizabeth Magill to resign was Marc Rowan, CEO of private equity giant Apollo Global Management. Rowan is one of the university’s wealthiest donors.
Billionaire Ronald Lauder, another powerful financial backer of school, threatened to do the same if more wasn’t done to fight "antisemitism." Brandeis Center, a Jewish civil rights legal organization, filed civil rights complaints with the US Dept of Education, accusing Penn of nurturing a hostile environment toward Jewish students. Stone Ridge Holdings CEO Ross Stevens, a major donor to Penn, sent a letter to Penn threatening to cost the school approximately $100 million for allowing students anti-war demonstrations.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Columbia President Minouche Shafik resigned after a little more than a year. She's the third female college president to lose her job. Students' protests over how Israel is fighting its war against the Palestinians has exposed cracks in the protection of the right to express an opinion publicly without being penalized or maligned.
New York GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Harvard alumna, was relentless in her condemnation of the women college presidents. Hearing of Shafik's resignation Elise Stefanik said, “THREE DOWN, so many to go.”
A fourth woman, interim college President at Columbia, Katrina Armstrong, has been forced out after seven months. Armstrong’s resignation from Columbia U. comes after the Trump White House called for a ban on masks at campus anti-war protests as part of a list of reforms aimed at cracking down on "rampant antisemitism" that demonstrations against the massive bombing of Palestinians are being cast as.
Fifth woman: tenured Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke is stepping down after 25 years following a university investigation into her comments during an anti-war campus protest on January 2024 involving two IDF Israeli students who sprayed anti-war demonstrators with a chemical made and used in Israel by the IDF to suppress protests in Palestine. In an interview with Democracy Now! Franke claimed that Israeli students who had served in the Israel Defense Forces "have been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus."
Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth; although grilled by Stefanik, was spared ouster by the pro-Israel billionaires.
Reports have indicated that approximately 100 USA black sites exist all over the world, including in countries like Poland, Romania, Thailand, Lithuania, Egypt, Guantanamo, etc. to hide prisoners being held and/or tortured by U.S. military or CIA agents.
Just like Zionism white washes its history
Of course of course. But… rather like the endless “My country used to be something but has now changed” posts, one must ask, what took you so long? Not to say that Trump isn’t announcing this publicly in a first timey kind of manner, and he is deservedly our demon du jour but the path was well worn, has been since 1776. After 7 teenage years in the US I wandered into a bookshop on 9/11 1973 in London and all the staff were glued to the telly broadcasting the coup and overthrow of Allende in Chile. No-one in that room was in any doubt who was behind it. Who could live through the desperate Vietnam years and still be fooled? America as a force for good in the world is as real as claiming Colonialism was good for the colonized.
That all “great” powers do this is a yes, absolutely, but why? Or, why do so many believe it for so long? It is either that Western civilization is the greatest brainwasher in human history, has developed a culture this needy of lies, a psychosis we could find a name for: Europanoia. Or a diabolical combination of the two.
I could put a date to the onset of the pathology: 1095, first crusade or the ever popular 1492, that would be much more useful than gleefully pointing at Trump. A pathology evolved, so rancid, I am sorry Chris, in monotheism: the creator of eternal children who must identify with their fictions to get out of bed each morning, whose Deuteronomy roots make glory of genocide, that the path ahead is probably the greatest challenge in history.
Bundled as it is with the climate catastrophe grounded also in the Supremacy of the monotheisms.
The truism that half of any problem is admitting it exists makes me ask when this community thinks this Trumpish revisionism began? Imagining it is his, first, not a continuation run out before us by every administration, pushed by most academics in most schools every day, babbled by Blinken when Hegseth was binging in obscurity, only ever really challenged by Alice Walker, J Baldwin, Toni Morrison, hmmm is ridiculous political self delusion.
Maybe we are lucky Trump is so blatant. I’d say so. But fantasizing he is unique means this nation will never admit what it has done, not uniquely, but has done bigger than Empires previous, in direct line from the formidable fictions of Britain. The admission we need might at last be a revolution, not just the sad and bloated colony it is, and we might proceed with a well earned humility and begin repairing what we have done. Let the reparations, for instance, begin. A good ole Christian concept. On paper.
The scandal is Trump's crudeness, you see. There are genteel ways of doing things; ways understood by properly educated people so unpleasantries like "empire" or "neolib" or "oligarchy" or "war profiteering" need never be mentioned.
The best American scientists worked on the Manhattan project. No need to speak of irradiated Japanese civilians when the point was to establish the U.S. as indisputably the greatest power ever. The //Best and Brightest,// the title of Halberstam's book on the Vietnam war, is an Ivy League guide to pursuing strategic goals in remote parts of the globe. So of course it was revived by subsequent Dem administrations. Simplistic bifurcations like win or lose just do not apply.
The ultimate arrangement was achieved during the Biden administration. (Foolish critics use improper terms like "neolib" plus "neocon.") Free enterprise capitalism guaranteed by military discipline whenever needed. The dream of the now dominant Chicago School of Economics. Its founder, Milton Freedman, supported Pinochet and advised the Chilean government because "democracy interferes with market efficiency." It would have been best, though, had H Clinton not revealed the concurrence of the Ivy D elite with that little "a basket of deplorables" remark. No need to say what the best already know.
I'm with you. And yes......the overthrow of Allende puts the historical trajectory back a few decades....we could look at Kissinger's role in Argentina's dirty war as well.....but truly, America's interference around the world....her terrible belief in her own superior knowledge.........and the clandestine way she does things, so that many well meaning people don't have a clue where anything starts or ends.....
Can make anyone who takes the trouble to know a little history wonder if there is any hope of rehabilitating such a perverse and pervasive phenomena as American military exceptionality. In such a context, many perhaps decide its best not to know...to get back to 'my country right or wrong' and do as we're told and stay asleep.
Being 'woke' is the crime. What's going on in Gaza, the cleansing.
And yes......perhaps Trump's blatancy is a bonus. It's hard to deny his cancerous ego...perhaps it will wake up a few.
Stay well. And thanks for remembering.
I think something really momentous can happen, needs to, it is hinted at in the books they’ve all read but is very unlikely: European shame and admission. I don’t hold my breath. But many of us could walk away. Israel is finished as a virtue center and by association Western civilization. From Blm to metoo, their gluttonous superiority has been challenged and shattering. The posters I was writing on are not able to break free, they are too invested. But the rest of us? I think so.
It's not that many of us don't know...its that they have the power, and the power is military, and not just worshipped by Repugs.
I'm shocked and a bit amused by all the uproar over the chat the fascists invited a journalist to.........but no one questions Amerika's inalienable right to bomb whom ever they choose.....no war declared or anything...
Just drop a few bombs on 'terrorists' wherever, and the majority of Americans worry about the security of the chat, not the war crime of the act.
That country is a military war machine...and has been as long as I've been alive.
Trump wanting to make it all noble and superior and the best thing since sliced bread again........might have more support on both sides of the aisle than many of us imagine.
Bravo
"Authoritarians promise to replace bias with “objective truth.” But their “objective truth” is about sacralizing our civil religion and leadership cult. "
Liberals do the same thing, but with a different religion and a different cult. Recall, for instance, that god-awful Bridgerton movie where they made King George's wife a black woman.
Keep in mind that Bridgerton was set during the time of the South Sea Bubble, which quite literally was based on trading slaves to Spanish colonies in Latin America. Going off memory, the queen at the time was a sponsor of the (slave-trading) South Sea Company, but again, that is just my memory.
Although I'm a staunch believer in the values of democracy, I have to admit that in cases of total chaos and deep divisions among the society, authoritarianism can be the solution. But, please bring an intelligent true patriot interested in the wellbeing of the whole society, not that gorilla we have at white house.
Petition for the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil.
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-the-immediate-release-of-columbia-student-pro-palestine-advocate-mahmoud-khalil-from-dhs-detention
I can't even pretend to approach Chris' elucidation, so permit me two relatively minor comments:
1) "President Donald Trump’s latest executive order titled “RESTORING TRUTH AND SANITY TO AMERICAN HISTORY” replicates a tactic used by all authoritarian regimes. In the name of countering bias, they distort the nation’s history into self-serving mythology."
Of course the above has been central to the Zionist project as well, from its inception to the present day. Mere coincidence? Both this country and its "greatest ally" (read "partner in crime(s)") spread their scrubbed and conjured up narratives like manure across both their respective domestic scenes and the international realm. One point of intersection between the two is our complicity in the genocide in Palestine.
2) "There is proposed legislation in Congress calling for... the renaming Washington Dulles International Airport to Donald J. Trump International Airport..."
Well, I actually do see some worth in that, something like "truth in advertising", at least the place would bear the name of an out-and-out exemplar of the American Empire, rather than the nearly forgotten Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (after whom it is named) who together with his perhaps even less recalled brother Allen, Director of the CIA , worked more covertly in the shadows of the Empire but were nonetheless key accomplices in the establishment of the post-war world hegemon, if not among its architects. Both were skilled in its dark arts.
How does that line from "The History Boys" go? "History. It's just one bloody thing after another." With the US and Israel, that's literally true.
Sounds like the better place to study U S history might be Canada.
Stacy Schiff has a wonderful piece about previous attempts to invade Canada. One included Ben Franklin, who one would have thought had more sense.
Timothy Snyder going to Canada is a gift, if one reads his analysis of the proxy war in Ukraine. Filled with an absence of essential, relevant facts.
He's a gift to Canada, that's for sure.
I wish you would do a talk on how the media is not doing their job regarding Trump
,especially when they do these interview questions. They don’t ask pertinent questions and they don’t follow up on his evasions. For example,they were asking this morning or I don’t know last night on the airplane, did he think having a third term was was OK or something to that effect , and instead of saying well, you know the constitution prohibits that and so how can you even talk about that? That would be too much for them.
It is wonderful to have someone like Chris Hedges defend the values that make America great. We need people like him to fight for what is right. Whether you agree with all of his policies, one can certainly say that his motivations are manifestly for a more moral, fair and decent world for all to live in peacefully. Some would say the same of Donald Trump, and be able to find evidence to support their claim. Naturally, they can't both be right. What I do know for a fact is that both those who support the Hedges position and those who support the Trump position both sincerely believe that they each have the best intentions for the country. Both believe the opposite side is "obviously" wrong. Such is the nature of politics and probably always will be.
"objective facts..." Never mind for the last 100 years we've been living in a post-Einstein and post-Heisenberg universe of relativity and uncertainty. Where what was long assumed to be objectivity turned out to be the viewpoint of privileged Euro and Euro descent white men. Where even traditionalist theologians are now mindful of the perspectives of women, the global South, and Indigenous peoples.
I prefer the outlook of a sticker I was given at a BAAITS (Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits) powwow. It's from an East Bay Ohlone people, the Lisjan, who have a women-led land trust. It reads: REMATRIATE THE LAND.
Write to us about what we can actually DO to combat the trump administration. Please send your thoughts and ideas.
If you are an alum of any of the schools that are kowtowing to Trump, tell them why you won't donate. If they are under attack, tell them to stand fast.
Fake America "Great" Again.
Well, this is obviously the goal of white supremacists...and it has always been their goal. It's important to remember when public education was a lot less expensive in America. I did a masters in Massachusetts during the Viet Nam era but only learned much later how cheap it was to go to Berkley back then. Ronnie Regan began reversing that affordability and the turning of universities into cash cows for the global elites came to Canadian universities soon after.
A good part of a real education is learning, not just the past, but learning how to think for ourselves, and thereby see past partial truths and supremacist lies. The truly educated people of America are going to have to act, speak up, refuse to allow propaganda to replace truth in the classrooms of the nation.
And that might be harder than I imagine. Because I don't know how far penny pinching and profiteering have got in American schools. Perhaps the authorities are already erasing the horrific stories of all the shootings that from time to time spice up learning in American schools...perhaps the majority of Americans think all is well, in the best and brightest nation on earth.
Up here in Canada, we are starting to wonder how far things have got south of our borders.