Monday, April 22: "Democracy On the Ballot"
Once again, it's the most important election of our lifetimes or whatever
It’s been almost 200 days since October 7. Every single week, with each update there’s a new story of yet another war crime or a latest horrific development like emergency services in Gaza uncovering a mass grave with dozens of bodies at the Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis, weeks after Israeli Occupation Forces withdrew from the area. Every day features a dozen of the most heartbreaking and gut-wrenching stories imaginable, and they’re forgotten just as quickly as they’re told. The mainstream appetite for genocide hasn’t yet reached a limit, but the attention of so many has been directed elsewhere.
The IOF is forever exploring new deviant ways to murder Palestinians. One of the latest and most perverse methods involves quadcopter drones luring people outside using recordings of the sound of women and children screaming. Anyone brave enough to try and help is then fired upon by the drone. If this method of murder sounds familiar it’s because Susan Collins employed a similar tactic in her “Hunger Games” book series. At this point our collective ability to handle and sustain an adequate level of outrage has been overworked and fatigued, but these crimes are undoubtedly sickening.
Meanwhile, American politicians kept themselves busy last week by passing a resolution in the house of representatives clarifying that the popular Palestinian protest slogan, 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' is actually antisemitic and its use must be condemned. 200 days of genocide streaming live and directly to our phones, and this is what the clowns in congress prioritize. Voting these cowards out of office should be the least of their punishment, what these folks really need are lobotomies and mass exile.
But the bozos on Capitol Hill weren’t finished! The house of representatives also made time to pass a ridiculous funding bill, securing ~$95 BILLION in foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel. An overwhelming majority of representatives voted on Saturday for $61 billion in aid to Ukraine and the apartheid state, as well as a renewed measure to clamp down on the popular social media platform TikTok. American politicians also found the time to veto a widely-supported UN resolution backing full UN membership for Palestine. In the 15-member UN security council there were 12 nations in favor, two abstentions, and the United States posing the sole opposition with full veto power. So much for democracy I guess.
With election season looming and campaign workers eager to remind you that this election matters more than any other, it’s fair to ask what freedoms have been protected under Biden? Mass protest has been banned in multiple states, censorship is at an all-time high, women’s rights have been and continue to be violated, racism is as rampant as it is regular, and 40,000+ Palestinians have been murdered. Nothing has been protected.
The protests across the US haven’t stopped and have indeed ramped up on a number of college campuses this week. Brave students at Columbia University in NYC faced down suspension, arrest, and endless attempts at intimidation from both law enforcement and their own university administration. What started out as an autonomous protest zone on the campus lawn has now spread to numerous universities, as students across the country join in solidarity.
(Columbia University solidarity camp, where students’ stated demands were that the university divest from its financial holdings in firms that profit from Israel’s war and occupation in Palestine)
Hundreds of Yale students constructed a similar encampment of tents outside a board of trustees meeting this weekend, with organizers saying they wouldn’t leave until Yale divested from all military weapons manufacturing. Students there faced arrest earlier today while the protest at Columbia remains as a model for others to follow. At UNC Chapel Hill, students got clever and set up tents on the campus lawn, ‘violating school policy’. But when the clowns enforcing these policies came to forcibly remove the tents, the protestors collectively lifted up their tents and marched around the quad carrying them. Legends.
The situation in Columbia is particularly nefarious when you remember that the university is the largest land owner in all of NYC and skips paying ~$179 million on taxes every year. The white house issued a statement on the situation, frantically trying to paint these protesters as Jew-haters, saying, “While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly Antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous – they have absolutely no place on any college campus, or anywhere in the United States of America.” Mind you, many of the students protesting on Columbia’s campus are Jewish, but stay focused, don’t get distracted.
200 days of genocide and this is what the white house considers unconscionable and dangerous.
Side Items
Tortured Poets Department: Popstar monarch queen and weapon of mass distraction Taylor Swift dropped a “surprise” double album last week, sending her supporters into a tizzy and proving once again that the power of distraction can overcome even an active genocide. The linked article provides a well worded takedown of Swift’s latest work, which I have neither listened to nor plan to seek out at any point in the future. Speaking of tortured poets, today seems like as good a day as any to read and be inspired to action by the works of Palestinian writers, who are being summarily executed, imprisoned, starved, displaced, and *literally* tortured, unlike America’s sweetheart
Solution to Capitalist Greed: A Vietnamese real estate tycoon was sentenced to death in the nation’s largest financial fraud case, a major development in a growing anti-corruption push in the southeast Asian state. Truong My Lan, a high-profile businesslady who previously served as head of a massive company that developed everything from luxury apartments to hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested back in 2022. The 67-year-old was convicted for fraud amounting to $12.5 billion — ~3% of Vietnam’s 2022 GDP — and for illegally controlling a major bank and allowing loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion. I’ll happily go on the record as pro-death penalty for scheming billionaires
Protest No More: Last week the supreme court basically abolished the right to mass protest in three US states. A court decision effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, whereby a protest organizer faces potentially disastrous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act. More to come on this in the future, but it doesn’t paint a sunny picture for the future of organized protest in those states
Banned for LIFE: Johntay Porter, a former NBA player with the Toronto Raptors, was handed a lifetime ban from the league recently after it was revealed that he was placing bets on NBA games. Porter was betting on himself (a lesson for us all), or rather, against himself (oh, nvm) in a way that the NBA deemed ‘illegal’ and will now be relegated to a punchline and a cautionary tale of where sports and gambling intersect