Stuck in the 60s

Protesting for fun and profit

Michael D. Shaw Oct 16, 2025 @ Mike's Point of View

 For most of us who lived through that period, it ended —in every sense—either when we graduated from college, or entered the workforce. Realistic assessments of this fractious era would rightly view it as pretty much a terrible time, replete with war, assassinations, and unrest. On the positive side—for many—was the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, although the rampant drug use harmed many more lives than is acknowledged even now, nearly 60 years later.

Yet, as we Boomers grew older, we all knew contemporaries, who seemed to be stuck in that era. Some would follow the Grateful Dead, while others, who had achieved some degree of success, seemed locked into the naive politics and mores, and even fashions of the 60s, although in no rational manner did they apply to their current lives.

Admittedly, hippie sightings became increasingly rare, but these people are still around. I recall attending a public meeting in DC in 2007, organized by the EPA regarding regulation of a particular chemical. A few minutes after the meeting was called to order, a high-ranking EPA scientist was scheduled to speak. And, then it happened…

In what can only be described as a time warp, the very image of a 1968 hippie chick walked into the room. I whispered some inquiries to a few people around me, and I was assured that, yes, she really does dress that way all the time. Do I need to add that her “scientific” presentation was dripping with flower child sentimentality, and actually called for the chemical in question to be regulated to a concentration lower than what occurs in nature.

Several people, myself included, challenged this absurd notion, but she earnestly replied that this was what “their models” called for. Bear in mind that the chemical in question here is essential to healthcare, and needed better analysis than might be proffered by someone viewing her job as protecting the public from EEE-VILLE chemical companies.

Viewed in the context of a 60s protest, this attitude makes perfect sense, right?

Of all the protests that occurred then, up to the ones occurring now, other than the demonstrators being against something, has a practical solution to the problem at hand ever been put forth?

You can hate ICE all you want, but how does that solve the problem of massive illegal immigration and open borders? The Vietnam War was a disaster from the get-go, but I never saw any demonstrator or politician offer a detailed critique, along with recommendations on how to better handle the matter. And, in retrospect, such a critique would not have been difficult at all.

“Boy genius” Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara consistently argued that “on paper” our strategy should crush the enemy. I guess he didn’t realize that running a war is a wee bit different from production planning at Ford. Of course, Bobby Mac took care of number one, by resigning in 1968 at the very height of the war, to take over the World Bank.

Good luck finding a single media story of the time either criticizing McNamara or the military leadership falling into the old cliche of “the generals fighting the last war.” Oh sure, we were reminded on a daily basis how many of our soldiers were dying, but when the whole tragedy came to an end on 30 April 1975, there were no stories about how Ambassador Graham Martin was a hero, who saved American and allied lives.

And, even though public opinion was vastly against the war by then, no one in the media had the courage to state, flat out, that 58,200 of our men died for nothing.

But there were protests then, and there are protests now—featuring some of the same people. Relics from the 60s trying to relive their glory days. Full marks for noticing that the entire Democratic Party platform is essentially one big protest against Donald Trump.

Thanks for reading Mike's Point Of View! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Spontaneous Riots: Not Exactly

By Susan Daniels Sep 19, 2025 @ Susan's Newsletter

Adam Swart founded Crowds on Demand as a college student at UCLA in 2012 because he understood the power of a crowd to shape people's perceptions.

  

His website tells it all:  

The same speech by a politician has a different meaning if it is given in front of 1000 people instead of 10. A routine conference becomes ‘controversial’ when 50 protesters are outside.

We create movements from the ground up on something as simple as a local building and zoning issue or as complex as an international business dispute. We create advocacy groups and staff them with suitable leadership. We also provide phone banking and mass-emailing services with global capabilities.”

If you need to hire protesters, we can get a crowd on the street, sometimes within 24 hours time. If you need speakers to present at a council meeting, we can provide talented and well-spoken individuals to advocate for the cause. We also have a dedicated team of phone-banking staff who can call Congressional Offices and convince government officials to support your cause and help you overcome opposition. If you need lots of letters and emails written from constituents, we have a network of tens of thousands of individuals across the country who can send well-written constituent letters to their representatives.

We provide a cost-effective way to lobby government to pass or defeat legislation, push for approval of projects, and influence government in a grassroots manner. We are the ultimate guerilla lobbying and government relations firm.

Swart's company states on its website that they are "best known for organizing passionate demonstrations, rallies, flash-mobs, corporate PR events, and light-hearted events such as paparazzi, brand ambassadors, and PR stunts."

Swart said there is "a lot of misinformation online" about paid protesters. His company hires people for "peaceful and law-abiding protest," and are focused on "persuasion." 

In an interview with Fox’s Lawrence Jones about how protesters are paid, Swart said it is usually $100 to $200 but said different circumstances determine the amount. For instance, if the weather is really cold “or a left-wing demonstration in rural Mississippi, that would be a higher rate, because finding and identifying those people is harder and that might be a more tense environment.”

He said his company, as Michael Jordan so astutely commented about how Republicans buy sneakers, too, also works for conservatives. “We work for the left and the right, but always on the side of common sense and generally on the side of the underdog. So we, a lot of conservatives, use our service because, a lot of times, there's a case where hippies with a trust fund are out there protesting, but conservatives are more likely to have jobs and families, so actually they require a little bit more of an incentive to turn out to a demonstration."

But Swart’s company will not work for everyone who wants to hire it. There was a request for a nationwide “Good Trouble Lives On” protests on July 17, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the death of civil rights leader John Lewis.

While speaking with NewsNation, Swart said:

“Interests aligned with the organizers of the July 17th movement have approached us. In fact, we rejected an offer that is probably worth around $20 million. He said he had a concern about violence and thought a protest would be ineffective.”

The way Swart originally gained attention was by offering "celebrity experience" services such as “fake paparazzi and hired fans,” primarily in Los Angeles. Who knew? I wonder if he hires Swifties?

Swart worked as a journalist for the Patch network owned by AOL before founding his company.

 

Flight Attendants for Islamic Airline Hijackers

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog  

 

Karen Martin was the first of the flight attendants to be attacked by Islamic terrorists on September 11. While the head flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11 lay bleeding after being stabbed, the rest of her team, Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney, remained collected and provided the first reports about the hijacking. By the time the 9/11 attacks were over, 25 flight attendants would be among the nearly 3,000 killed by Arab Muslim terrorists.

Airline passengers however recently noted the shocking images of some flight attendants wearing PLO pins. Islamic terrorists claiming to represent the cause of the Arab Muslim colonists in Israel who called themselves ‘Palestinians’ had innovated the practice of the mass hijacking of airplanes. There was a direct line between the Dawson’s Field hijacking of four airplanes in 1970 and the hijacking of four airplanes by Al Qaeda on September 11.

In 1970, a plane headed to New York City was hijacked by a terrorist holding a gun to a flight attendant’s head. While an Israeli steward helped end a hijacking attempt on one of the planes, the captured terrorists were traded in exchange for the hostages. And one of the terrorists, Leila Khaled, would go on to become a popular figure in the campus anti-Israel movement.

Flight attendants supporting Islamic terrorists would seem to be suicidal, but they’re not alone.

The Association of Flight Attendants CWA recently announced that it had joined other radical unions in bailing out Hamas by calling for an end to Israeli attacks on the Islamic terrorist group.

The AFA-CWA has taken to trying to ‘organize’ Delta workers into joining its radical union and has championed the wearing of PLO flag pins as a sign of what it can do for flight attendants..

When Delta reacted by banning any pins other than the American flag, an AFA-CWA video furiously blasted the airline for taking a stand for America and against support for terrorists.

The video claimed that opposing terrorist flag pins was “racist” and urged flight attendants to join the union which would protect them from “harassment” by passengers opposed to terrorism.

Other flight attendants wearing terrorist flag pins were seen on Spirit and JetBlue: whose flight attendants are represented by AFA-CWA. JetBlue was accused of “blatant antisemitism” after calling the police on a Jewish passenger after he objected to a terrorist flag pin.

The AFA-CWA may be ‘ground zero’ for the explosion of terrorist flag pins on planes.

Sara Nelson, the president of AFA CWA, had previously weaponized the union for partisan attacks, but this is the first time a union of flight attendants is working to help terrorists.

Some of the same Islamic terrorists who butchered flight attendants on September 11.

Hamas, which the AFA CWA is trying to save as part of the so-called National Labor Network for Ceasefire (NLNC), is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. As was Al Qaeda whose core emerged out of a splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood. Osama bin Laden had been a member of the Brotherhood. Intervening to save Hamas in Gaza is the same thing as saving Al Qaeda.

The AFA-CWA press release described President Sara Nelson as a “a consistent social justice supporter” and claimed that the union was trying to stop Israel’s attacks on Hamas because “aviation’s first responders bring people together around the world. Saving lives comes first.”

As Americans found out on September 11, saving lives in the air requires fighting terrorists, not surrendering to them. The AFA-CWA’s attempt to save terrorists will only cost more lives.

Including those of flight attendants.

Unlike the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which is an independent union that represents American Airlines flight attendants and maintains a memorial to the heroic flight attendants killed on 9/11, the AFA-CWA is an extremist organization linked to the far left.

While the AFA part stands for the Association of Flight Attendants, the CWA part means that the union is actually a subset of the Communications Workers of America. The CWA had already issued its own demand that Israel stop attacking Hamas. As has the AFL-CIO that the CWA is affiliated with. Rather than representing flight attendants, the AFA-CWA is part of a larger leftist political machine whose roots are not in the workplace, but in the government-union complex.

AFA-CWA President Sara Nelson, who was being considered for a ‘labor’ cabinet position in the Biden administration, has done quite well at the expense of actual labor. Records show that while the average flight attendant earns less than $70,000, Nelson made nearly $180,000.

Nelson is married to fellow union honcho, David Borer, who is the general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees. Borer’s salary has been estimated at $290,000. Together this ‘union household’ pulls down nearly half a million dollars a year.

That may explain how Sara Nelson and David Borer’, whose unions are both under the AFL-CIO umbrella, can afford to live in Chevy Chase, an extremely wealthy D.C. area neighborhood where the elite reside and other political government operatives make their home.

Nelson is an ally of Sen. Bernie Sanders who has repeatedly attacked Israel for defending itself. And like Sanders, Nelson has learned to live quite well while shouting about class warfare.

The AFA CWA’s efforts to save Islamic terrorists, who murder flight attendants, show that the union no longer represents flight attendants or Americans, but a class of radical activists who hate America and support its enemies. And they want to fly the colors of those enemies.

Flight attendants, like all of us, have a choice. We can be like Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney who resisted the Islamic terrorists on September 11, or like Sara Nelson who defends them.

On September 11, Arab Muslim had to hijack planes to fly them into buildings. But now there are radical flight attendants who don’t even need to be hijacked to support airline hijackers.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.
Thank you for reading.

Iran is Funding the Pro-Hamas Protests

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog 

Who is funding the pro-Hamas riots in major cities? The state sponsors of Hamas in Tehran.

After failing to mention it in previous briefings, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines finally issued a press release admitting that “Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza” by “posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

Haines, a veteran of the Obama and Biden administrations, then went out of her way to defend participants in the pro-Hamas movement even though they are working with America’s enemies.

“I know Americans who participate in protests are, in good faith, expressing their views on the conflict in Gaza,” she argued. “Americans who are being targeted by this Iranian campaign may not be aware that they are interacting with or receiving support from a foreign government.”

That problem could be easily addressed if Haines revealed the names that the Iranian campaign operates under and which pro-Hamas groups or individuals are benefiting from the money.

Especially since doing business with the Iranian government is illegal without special exemptions. If Americans are taking money from the Iranian government, they’re committing a crime. And if they don’t know the source of the money, shouldn’t the U.S. government warn them that they’re unintentionally breaking the law? So why is Haines still keeping quiet?

Iran’s support for the pro-Hamas movement is no secret. The terrorist regime in Tehran has declared its support for the terror riots and even sanctioned’ the Chief of the University of Florida Police Department and other law enforcement personnel for interfering with the terrorists.

“Dear university students in the United States of America, you are standing on the right side of history. You have now formed a branch of the Resistance Front,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had declared, openly taking credit for the pro-Hamas movement.

The term “Resistance Front” is used to refer to Iran’s international network of terrorist groups including Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and others. (Iran doesn’t officially list Al Qaeda as part of this network, which does include other Sunni Muslim Brotherhood groups like Hamas, but the current leader of Al Qaeda is based out of Tehran.) By naming the Hamas protesters as part of the “Resistance Front”, Iran was including them alongside Hamas and Hezbollah, whose flags have been waved at the riots, as one of the terror fronts that it funds and controls.

During a terrorist conference, IRGC Chief Commander Hossein Salami, a leader of Iran’s international terrorist network, boasted that “the resistance is so grand, beautiful, and captivating that its attractions have penetrated even into the universities of the US.”

Iranian universities organized solidarity protests praising the Hamas encampments complete with chants of ‘Death to America!’ ‘Death to Israel!’ and ‘Death to the Jewish oppressors!’

An Iranian university offered free tuition for students protesting in support of Islamic terrorism.

Kayhan, a major Iranian regime newspaper, wrote that “every student from Harvard, MIT, Boston, Columbia, Emerson, Texas, and so forth has become an Iranian student” and celebrated, “this is what we call exporting the Islamic Revolution!”

Foad Izadi, a professor at Tehran University who is listed as affiliated with the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, boasted that the Hamas supporters on college campuses were “our people”.

“If tensions between America and Iran rise tomorrow or the day after, these are the peoples who will have to take to the streets to support Iran,” he told an interviewer. “Personally, I think that the potential to repeat in the U.S. what Iran did in Lebanon is much higher. Our Hizbullah-style groups in America are much larger than what we have in Lebanon.”

The Iranian regime has done everything possible to take responsibility for the Hamas riots. After months of it, the Biden administration has tentatively gotten around to admitting the obvious.

Why is the Biden administration covering up Iran’s role in the Hamas campus riots?

The protesters and rioters are almost universally members of the administration’s leftist political base. And the administration has gone to great lengths to defend them. Like Haines, Biden and Kamala both praised the Hamas rioters as being motivated by the best possible intentions.

The Hamas rioters “are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza,” Kamala recently told The Nation: an extremist magazine whose writers have championed the riots and denied Hamas atrocities. Kamala sounded like Iran’s Khamenei.

And the Biden administration has played a major role in enriching the Iranian regime.

Iran has benefited from tens of billions in sanctions relief. That money allowed it to build up allied terror groups like Hamas in Israel, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. The US Navy has been battling the Houthis for months on the high seas because of those billions.

The dozens of Americans killed in Israel by Hamas and others who may die in a war with Hezbollah can be attributed to the Biden administration’s extensive sanctions relief to Iran.

And it’s likely that the sanctions relief also freed up money used to interfere in our election.

In her Senate testimony, Haines implied that Iran was interfering in the coming elections. We already know that Iran interfered on behalf of the Democrats in the 2020 election.

The IRGC had previously engaged in a “cyber-enabled disinformation and threat campaign designed to influence the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election” through a false flag operation by Iranian operatives pretending to be conservatives sending emails to “tens of thousands of registered voters” in Florida that threatened them “with physical injury if they did not change their party affiliation and vote for President Trump.”

The Iranian operatives organizing and funding Hamas riots in America may be the same ones trying to swing the 2024 presidential election to the Biden-Harris ticket.

That’s why the Biden administration doesn’t want to talk about them.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.

Gays for Killing Gays

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

Nearly eight years after a Muslim terrorist committed the largest massacre of gay people in American history, LGBTQ Islamic terror supporters blocked the Philadelphia gay pride parade.

“Long live the Intifada,” members of Queers4Palestine chanted, referring to the Islamic terrorist campaign against the Jewish State, chanting that the gay pride parade was just like the KKK and the Israeli army. “From the sea to the river, Palestine will live forever!”

Protesting a gay pride parade in support of Hamas was a fitting prelude to the anniversary of the Islamic massacre at a gay nightclub which had its own Hamas connection.

On June 12th, 2016, Omar Mateen, an Afghan Muslim, conducted his own ‘intifada’ at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, murdering 49 people and wounding over 50 more partygoers.

The terrorist attack at a gay nightclub is commemorated every year in the gay community without a single reference to the fact that Omar was a Muslim terrorist killing for Islam.

Even though Omar Mateen had told coworkers that he had ties to Islamic terrorism, had been investigated by the FBI as an Islamic terrorist (he had convinced the FBI that his coworkers were ‘Islamophobes’) and there are recordings of him pledging allegiance to ISIS during the attack, every anniversary of the Pulse nightclub massacre makes no mention of the “I” word.

“My name is Islamic soldier,” Omar had told a law enforcement negotiator. “It’s the last month of the Ramadan… I fasted the whole day today. I fasted and I prayed.”

Omar had come from an Islamic terrorist supporting family. His father, who had run for president of Afghanistan, had publicly praised the Taliban. And there was also a Hamas connection.

Omar’s wife, Noor Salman, was born to ‘Palestinian’ parents and her first marriage had been arranged in her father’s “hometown” in Israel’s West Bank. The Salman family owns extensive property in the area including businesses and an apartment in which they live part of the time.

Her mother had cheered Hamas.

“How many snipers from Palestine deserve a bow from our heads as respect to them?” she had posted on Oct 6, 2013, and expressed her support for Hamas official Jamal Al-Taweel.

“My brother and friend, Jamal, rest assured that you are backed by a sister who prays for you night and day, asking Allah to release you from your imprisonment,” she posted.

“A photo included with the post praises one fighter who ‘killed 11 Zionists.’”

One of Salman’s sisters had posted “Solidarity with Gaza.”

The Pulse terrorist’s ‘Palestinian’ wife was arrested and charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and misleading law enforcement about the attack.

According to authorities, Noor Salman had admitted that she was aware that her husband had bought a rifle, was watching terrorist videos and had even asked her, “What would make people more upset, an attack at Disney or a nightclub?”

“I knew he was going to do something,” she later told the FBI.

Before the attack, Omar told his ‘Palestinian’ wife, “this is the day”. The Justice Department alleged that, “Salman told the FBI that she contrived a cover story” and that when “she was initially questioned by the FBI, Defendant Salman steadfastly claimed to have no knowledge of her husband’s plan to commit an attack or his support for terrorist organizations.”

Defense attorneys claimed Salman had a low IQ and had been tired during her interrogation. A coalition of Islamist, anti-Israel and LGBTQ groups rallied to her defense, contending that she was the real victim because of “Islamophobia.” And a jury chose not to convict her.

Salman was defended by the Muslim Legal Fund of America. The chairman of MLFA is Hatem Bazian: a key figure in the anti-Israel and pro-Hamas movement leading protests in America.

Hatem Bazian, who had a long career of campus antisemitic incitement, co-founded Students for Justice in Palestine whose chapters went on to endorse the Hamas atrocities of Oct 7, and is the co-founder of American Muslims for Palestine which was recently sued by terror victims alleging that the group is providing “continuous, systematic, and substantial assistance to Hamas and its affiliates’ acts of international terrorism.” AMP is being represented by MLFA.

The intimate connection between the pro-Hamas protests and the Pulse massacre is an indictment of groups like Queers4Palestine which take part in a movement that is killing them.

The argument against groups such as “Queers for Palestine” is often tied to how Hamas treats gay people in Gaza, but as the Pulse massacre shows, that’s not just an issue in Gaza.

It’s just as much of an issue for a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Hamas is part of the larger Muslim Brotherhood network. That network includes not only most Islamist groups in America, but also Al Qaeda, which was dominated by a Brotherhood splinter group which in turn helped spin off Al Qaeda in Iraq or ISIS. Omar Mateen pledged his allegiance to ISIS during the Pulse attack after previously claiming to support Al Qaeda and Hezbollah: an Iranian backed terrorist group allied with Hamas that is also waging war on Israel.

The Brotherhood’s bloody fingerprints ultimately extend to the worst massacre of gay people. Organizations within its network then rallied to support and defend the killer’s ‘Palestinian’ wife.

When American gay rights groups rally for ‘Palestine’, Gaza and Hamas, they’re not just supporting the murder of gay people thousands of miles away, but also their own murders.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.  Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.

Jobs For Pro-Hamas College Grads

By Robin Itzler 

Editor's Note:  This is one of the commentaries selected from Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors. Any cartoons appearing will have been added by me.  If you wish to get the full edition,  E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free.  RK

 

Andrew Dudum is the founder and CEO of Hims, a publicly traded company that initially started in 2017 by selling treatments for erectile dysfunction and male hair loss. Soon after, he launched the female-centric Hers brand for birth control and libido-increasing drugs. Dudum thinks pro-Hamas, pro-terrorist protests are fantastic, which is why he is “eager to hire” anti-Israel protestors. Dudum posted: 

“If you’re currently protesting against the genocide of the Palestinian people & for your university’s divestment from Israel, keep going. It’s working.” 

Dudum went on to post: 

“There are plenty of companies & CEOs eager to hire you, regardless of university discipline.”

Dudum added a link to job openings at his firm.  Maybe Dudum doesn’t care what happens to his company, but as CEO he has a fiduciary responsibility that includes not making statements that reduce the value of its stock. Does he care as he sold a lot of shares back in March.  On March 21, 2024, Investing.com reported: 

Andrew Dudum, Chief Executive Officer of Hims & Hers Health, Inc. (NYSE:HIMS), has sold a total of 50,361 shares of the company's Class A Common Stock, according to a recent SEC filing. The transaction, which took place on March 20, 2024, amounted to over $823,000 at an average weighted price of $16.3431 per share. 

The shares were sold at varying prices ranging from $15.86 to $16.575, as noted in the filing's footnotes. This sale was executed under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, which Dudum had adopted on November 29, 2023. Such plans allow corporate insiders to sell shares over a predetermined period of time, providing a defense against potential claims of trading on inside information.

One of the Patriot Neighbors readers sent a letter to Dudum saying:

I read in the news today that you find the “moral courage” of anti-Semitic campus protesters exemplary and worthy of your employ. That is most certainly your prerogative. You can hire anyone you want for any reason and are certainly entitled to support the protesters, as well as have a personal opinion about October 7th, its aftermath, and the current defensive action Israel is taking, in accordance with the UN Charter, to prevent further aggression and annihilation. But, like the campus protesters, you are not entitled to your own facts........

Once you praised students for “protesting against the genocide of the Palestinian people” and demanding university “divestment from Israel,” you became an agent of dis- and misinformation. Do you understand that chants to destroy Israel from the River to the Sea, are a call to action to murder the 8 million Jews living in Israel? Those are the people you call "morally courageous" and to whom you claim allegiance!.......

Following Dudum’s posts announcing his desire to hire pro-terrorist college graduates, Hims and Hers lost $210 MILLION in stock value in ONE day when this was reported.  Within a few days, CEO Dudum partially walked back some of his statements. Of course, Dudum says his comments were misunderstood. (Didn’t Nazis at Nuremburg say the same thing?) 

If you would like to share your thoughts with CEO Dudum: 

Email: press@forhers.com; press@forhims.com - Phone: 800-368-0038 - Write: 4616 W. Howard Lane, Suite 960. Austin, TX 78728

Has the Sleeping Giant Finally Awakened?

By Rich Kozlovich

On May 8, 2024 Jamie Glazov published this piece, The Real Reason Pro-Hamas Protesters Wear Masks, at American Thinker, saying:

As pro-Hamas protests sweep U.S. campuses across our nation, a curious phenomenon has surfaced: a large number of the protesters are wearing not only the keffiyeh, but also the COVID mask.  Why is this, exactly?................

Some of the mask-wearers themselves maintain that they are trying to “stay safe” — in what they believe is the ongoing COVID “pandemic.”  Other observers have postulated, however, that this is an effort by the protesters to hide their identity  There are possible elements of truth in both of these reasons, but beneath these layers, something much deeper is going on — and it involves a powerful impulse that serves as the foundation of leftist utopianism itself. 

He went on to explain why there's a deeper understanding, and I gotta tell ya, this was really interesting.    The left consistently destroys cultures with violence, threats, control of the economy and destruction of the individual, with uniformity via coercion and threats in order to attain absolute control and create a whole new culture.  Because culture is king.

One reader commented: "The simplest explanation is usually the best. These kids are too stupid and brainwashed to know about the history that might be behind the face diapers."  Another reader called this piece, " A master class; would that it be allowed to be taught."  To which I agreed.   However, the comment I liked best was this one by Edward D Holman saying:

Or, it could merely be Occam's Razor in play. The asymmetrical warfare arm of the Left merely recognizes that what was once was an ally may turn on them if they lose control of the Executive Branch.

We now have a massive internal security apparatus that carries out a large number of intelligence missions every day on targeted groups. Facial recognition, undercover operators, and all manner of communication (including this platform) are collected under the guise of a homegrown terror threat. You know the ones. The real existential threats to democracy. That's us, folks.

Is this cross-agency effort being redirected at these 'mostly peaceful' campus protestors? One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. From this population may spring future acts of terror if this heats up. Are they being surveilled? Catalogued? Interviewed? Are they in contact with, or being supported by, foreign state and non-state actors who are hostile to the U.S.?

And is this Leviathan a supporter of the Left or is it merely alive and has a will to exist, for the good of the country, of course? Are the current Ideologues presently in charge of the government merely useful idiots to 'The Blob'? The lesser of two evils? Nitwits to be either ignored or placated while the security of the country is in the hands of the true patriots? The un-elected bureaucratic state.

I suppose we will find out. It looks like Trump may win. If so, the Left's military arm has decided to don masks just in case. They may the target of these domestic intelligence operations in the name of internal security. They would certainly fit the definition of an existential threat to democracy, if for no other reason than to placate the new regime, and provide the reason why the Patriot Act should be sustained.

Along with their existence. Remember. The State is cold-blooded and their motives are transactional.

I've cited Napoleon in the past saying never interfere with an enemy when he's making a mistake, and the left has now crossed the Rubicon, and their mistakes are compounding.   Their insanity is so obvious no one except nitwits in Hollywood and academia believe anything they say any longer.  

Well, this destruction of a culture can work both ways.  On May 09, 2024 Kurt Schlichter published this piece, Let Them Destroy Each Other, at Townhall.com saying:

Contrary to popular conservative opinion, I don’t want this college chaos to end anytime soon. I want it to increase and metastasize and continue right up until these entitled, ugly, mutated communist jerks totally alienate every normal American. It’s already happening. The frat boys have turned. The normals are turning. At one of these colleges, you had the theater major graduation ceremony invaded by Palesimpians and the parents began chanting, “USA! USA!” Will this and the administrations’ feeble response help flush these institutions’ bloated reputations down the crapper? Yes, please! So, keep it up, communist dipwads. I’m loving this.

 

Schlichter wants to see our current academic culture destroyed calling it "an abscess on the buttocks of American society", and observes these "elite" universities are filled with academic "jokes", many of whom are being exposed as plagiarists, and what about hiring the students they're turning out?"  He goes on to say:

A lot of these diversity [students] can’t cut it and have no skill set other than endlessly complaining about how they are oppressed. The fact a lot of them want to murder all the Jews is likewise troubling. These gibbering halfwits aren’t the leaders of the future. They’re morons. They’re stupid, and they’re boring...........who wants to hire one of these Harvard idiots? All you will get is internal strife, excuses for shoddy work, endless demands, and probably a lawsuit..........

After all, at some point, law firms, Wall Street, and giant corporations have to succeed at what they do. They’ve got a bottom line to consider, and somebody who demands every Friday off for mental health just isn’t going to cut it. But that’s what these entitled twits will do. They will try to bring their college nonsense into the real world. So far, the real world has accommodated them somewhat – HR departments are full of these idiots – but at some point, the people who actually want to succeed at their enterprise are going to have to hire people who can make them successful.

• After going out protesting, Columbia's law students demand a free pass on their finals 
• Judges: If You Graduate From Columbia, We're Not Hiring
• The death cult in American classrooms

Winston Churchill once stated "Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else."  And there's a lot of truth in that because America is fundamentally different than the rest of the world.  Our culture was built from the bottom up, and is a culture foundationally based on freedom, and individual rights, and leftist use those values against us.  It took a bit of time for everyone to become aware of what they're really attempting to achieve, but it's now blatantly obvious.  

They desire to destroy the American identity, the American culture, the American economy, and most importantly, demean and undermine the Constitution in order to destroy it in order to create a new tyrannous misanthropic culture of obedient servitude to the state.

For those who've read history books, they knew this for decades, and wrote about this for decades.  But, they were pretty much ignored by America.  Why?  Because academia, the media, and left leaning politicians on both sides of the aisle were pretty much in control directing our culture, and Americans are pretty much a live and let live people.    

But now, finally, all these riots, antisemitic protests, corruption involving their lawfare two tier justice system, voter fraud, spending, borrowing, and deep state crimes have made their true goals clear as a bell, and now perhaps, just perhaps, America, the sleeping giant, has awoken, because now we're witnessing "a nationwide tutorial on how to turn disinterested, pleasure-seeking youths into rabid Trump supporters."

Imagine that!

The Campus Kill-The-Jews Riots: Paid Professional Agitators Funded By Democratic Party Big Wigs, Or Well-Meaning Kids?

May 07, 2024 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

Several days ago, after the New York police broke up the kill-the-Jews occupations at Columbia, NYU and other universities, it emerged that close to half of the arrestees were not students or otherwise affiliated with the schools in question. At a news conference on April 30, Mayor Eric Adams adopted the term “professional outside agitators” to describe the main organizers of the protests (“What should have been a peaceful protest, it has basically been co-opted by professional outside agitators.").

The protests certainly give an appearance of being well-organized and equally well funded. For example, large numbers of identical newly-ordered tents seem to spring up on almost no notice. Did hundreds of young people on shoestring budgets just happen on their own initiative to place orders from the same website at the same time and all pay with their own money? That seems implausible. But if there is professional organization, who are the organizers? And who is paying them? You would think that this is an issue where the public would have a huge interest in knowing the answer — particularly if the answer should turn out to be that the main sponsors of the protests are also big funders of one of the major political parties. But this is a subject where the sponsors have a strong interest in concealing their role as much as possible, and where uncovering and exposing that role takes some significant effort.

Several news organizations have been doing serious digging to get to the bottom of this. In this post I’ll highlight the work of three of them:

• The New York Post, which has had a story on this subject nearly every day for the past week and more. Examples include a May 1 piece by Olivia Land (“Notorious anti-Israel protester Lisa Fithian, paid $300 a day to teach activists, spotted among Columbia rioters”); a May 2 piece by Joe Marino, Craig McCarthy and Emily Crane (“Nearly half of anti-Israel protesters arrested at Columbia, City College weren’t students: police”); and a May 5 piece by Chris Nesi (“Radical anti-Israel nonprofit urged rampaging Columbia occupiers to recreate BLM ‘summer of 2020’ riots”);
• Tablet, with a piece by Park MacDougald on May 6 (“The People Setting America on Fire: An investigation into the witches’ brew of billionaires, Islamists, and leftists behind the campus protests”); and
• Politico, with a piece by Shia Kapos on May 5 (“Pro-Palestinian protesters are backed by a surprising source: Biden’s biggest donors”).

And then we have the beyond-ridiculous New York Times. Their May 6 piece by five reporters (Amy Julia Harris, Chelsia Rose Marcius, Nicole Hong, Joseph Goldstein, and Erin Nolan) has the headline “Outsiders Were Among Columbia Protesters, but They Dispute Instigating Clashes.” Somehow it took five reporters to locate and interview only the handful of people who could be portrayed as the most innocent possible of participants in the riots and protests, and otherwise to conceal or minimize everything important about the situation.

I’ll start with the Shia Kapos piece in Politico. Politico is most definitely not a right-wing news site, and deserves credit for devoting resources to reporting honestly on this situation. This is the lede:

[S]ome of the groups behind the [anti-Israel] demonstrations receive financial backing from philanthropists pushing hard for [President Biden’s] reelection. The donors include some of the biggest names in Democratic circles: Soros, Rockefeller and Pritzker, according to a POLITICO analysis.

Here are a few examples of some detail from the Politico piece:

Two of the organizers supporting the protests at Columbia University and on other campuses are Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Both are supported by the Tides Foundation, which is seeded by Democratic megadonor George Soros and was previously supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. . . . Another notable Democratic donor whose philanthropy has helped fund the protest movement is David Rockefeller Jr., who sits on the board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It has given nearly $500,000 directly to Jewish Voice for Peace, which explicitly describes itself as anti-Zionist, over the past five years. Rockefeller Brothers has separately given grants to both the Tides Foundation and the Tides Center.

And don’t forget the Pritzkers:

Several other groups involved in pro-Palestinian protests are backed by a foundation funded by Susan and Nick Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt Hotel empire — and supporters of Biden and numerous Democratic campaigns, including $6,600 to the Biden Victory Fund a few months ago and more than $300,000 during the 2020 campaign.

For those unfamiliar with the Pritzker family tree, Nick is a cousin of both Jay Pritzker (Governor of Illinois) and Penny Pritzker (former Obama-era Commerce Secretary and current Board Chair of Harvard, the person most responsible for promoting Claudine Gay to President of that institution).

MacDougald’s piece at Tablet is even more deeply researched. Some key excerpts:

According to reporting in the New York Post, the Columbia encampment was principally organized by three groups: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and Within Our Lifetime (WOL). Let’s take each in turn. . . .

JVP and its affiliated political action arm, JVP Action, have received at least $650,000 from various branches of George Soros’ philanthropic empire since 2017, $441,510 from the Kaphan Foundation (founded by early Amazon employee Sheldon Kaphan), $340,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and smaller amounts from progressive donors such as the Quitiplas Foundation, according to reporting from the New York Post and NGO Monitor, a pro-Israel research institute.

National SJP is legally a “fiscal sponsorship” of another nonprofit: a White Plains, New York, 501(c)(3) called the WESPAC Foundation. . . . The largest single donor to WESPAC, however, appears to be something called the Eutopia Foundation, which donated $550,000 in 2022. . . . Eutopia appears to be the project of Albert Wenger, a German American computer scientist and managing partner at the New York venture capital firm Union Square Ventures, and his wife, Susan Danziger. . . .

WOL’s role appears to be that of shock troops, akin to the role played by black block militants on the anarchist side of the ledger. WOL is, however, connected to more seemingly “mainstream” elements of the anti-Israel movement. Abdullah Akl, a prominent WOL leader—indeed, the man leading the “strike Tel Aviv” chants in the video linked above—is also listed as a “field organizer” on the website of MPower Change, the “advocacy project” led by Linda Sarsour. MPower Change, in turn, is a fiscal sponsorship of NEO Philanthropy, another large progressive clearinghouse. NEO Philanthropy and its 501(c)(4) “sister,” NEO Philanthropy Action Fund, have received more than $37 million from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2021 alone, as well as substantial funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.

The New York Post has undoubtedly made the biggest contribution of all to the unmasking of the organizational structure and funding of the protests. There’s way too much in its many articles for me to cover all of it here, but one important element has been putting a human face on a few of the reprehensible characters who draw salaries from well-funded non-profit groups to train and organize the protesters.

For example, the Post has reported (on May 6) that one of the main organizers of the protests at Columbia is a 35 year-old non-student by the name of Manolo de los Santos, who runs a non-profit called The People’s Forum. De los Santos seems to have nothing but time on his hands to participate in and organize protests, which gives rise to a strong inference that he is being well paid by somebody.

According to the Post, TPF has received substantial funding from the philanthropic arm of Goldman Sachs. This excerpt begins with a quote from de los Santos himself:

“When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel, when the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism in our lifetime,” De Los Santos said in January in front of a cheering crowd in a now-viral video. His remarks were so vicious that South Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) denounced the speech as “Nazi rhetoric,” and called for Goldman Sachs, whose philanthropy arm used to direct funds to TPF, to cut ties with the organization.

And last but not least, we come to the New York Times version of the same events. Here’s the overview:

A New York Times review of police records and interviews with dozens of people involved in the protest at Columbia found that a small handful of the nearly three dozen arrestees who lacked ties to the university had also participated in other protests around the country. One man who was taken into custody inside Hamilton Hall, the occupied campus building, had been charged with rioting and wearing a disguise to evade the police during a demonstration in California nearly a decade earlier. But the examination also revealed that far more of the unaffiliated protesters had no such histories. Rather, they said, they arrived at Columbia in response to word of mouth or social media posts to join the demonstration out of some combination of solidarity and curiosity.

And then it is one example after another of decent, innocent people just trying to express their deep-felt feelings:

One of the people arrested at Columbia University this week was a middle-aged saxophonist who headed up to the campus from his Hell’s Kitchen apartment after learning about the protests on social media.

Another was tending his sidewalk pepper patch a few blocks from the student demonstrations when he learned the police were moving in and, grabbing a metal dog bowl and a spoon to bang against it, rushed to the students’ aid.

A third had been active in other left-leaning protests across the city but also happened to work as a nanny nearby. She went to the university gates on Tuesday and linked arms with other protesters in an unsuccessful attempt to thwart the advancing officers, she said. . . .

There was little evidence to suggest [the arrested non-students] had helped organize or escalate the protests, and many were arrested without having ever set foot on campus.

Somehow, the Times manages to avoid any mention of de los Santos. As to Lisa Fithian (subject of the May 1 piece in the Post), the Times makes only brief mention to say that although she is a “career activist” who “was captured on video Tuesday apparently urging counterprotesters to step aside so that Hamilton Hall could be barricaded,” she “denied playing any larger role in organizing the Columbia protests” and “was [not] present during the police sweeps on Tuesday.” Well, New York Times, of course the paid organizers and trainers aren’t stupid enough to join the building occupations and get themselves arrested.

I am reminded that the majority of the jurors on the Trump Manhattan criminal jury listed the Times as their main source of news.

College Protesters: Who are they?

American youth, professional agitators, international students, or all of the above. 

By Leesa K. Donner May 5, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News  Tags: Articles, Good Reads, Opinion, Politics

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

It’s a bird; it’s a plane – no, it’s super-protester! On college campuses from coast to coast, civil unrest is taking place at an alarming rate. But don’t ask the rabble to identify themselves; these protesters are loud, but they don’t appear to be proud. There is an obvious reason for protesting in disguise: fear of reprisal.

Increasingly pro-Palestinian agitators are donning keffiyehs and surgical masks before heading out the door with their pre-printed placards looking to all the world like a mob of mini-Yasser Arafats. The only problem is that those protesting have probably never even heard of the famed Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman. However, their lack of knowledge doesn’t prevent them from getting on a soap box and scaring the bejesus out of Jewish students, or worse.

Today’s protesters want to be heard but not identified, so they cover their faces, thinking it will protect them from being held accountable. This need to conceal suggests a desire to “protect their anonymity even as they demand universities and governments be held to account,” and that’s coming from The New York Times, of all places.

To ascertain who is up to no good on campus, one might want to reflect on the makeup of the student body. Today’s college campuses look nothing like those of days gone by. They are jam-packed with international students, leaving many Americans questioning whether some foreign students came here to get an education or if their intent is more sinister – perhaps for such a time as this.

According to Statista, there are more than 15 thousand students across the nation from Saudi Arabia, another ten thousand from Iran, over eight thousand from Turkey, and you don’t want to know the number from China – but that’s a whole other kettle of fish. “In 2022/23, there were 467,027 international graduate students, which accounted for over one-third of the international students in the country,” according to Statista. That means there are approximately 1.5 million students who hail from other countries. Oh yes, 21st-century college campuses are very diverse places indeed. There are no statistics, however, to tell us how many came here for an education and how many came to agitate. College protesters want to engage in free speech – but they don’t want their visas revoked.

Fear of reprisal extends to more than just taking away a young international student’s visa and shipping them back home. There’s a fear of online doxing, resume or career damage, and more. Why would they care about such things? Surveys show that 73% of all international students don’t want to get their diploma and go home; they want to stay here. More than one-third, 38%, “would like to live in the U.S. long-term, for four years or longer,” according to a FWD.us survey.

College Protesters: Peek-a-Boo

Anyone who’s ever watched a Denzel Washington movie knows that no one is truly anonymous these days, no matter where they are on Earth. In the age of the internet, a mask and head scarf are not going to do the trick. With an abundance of surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, the technology is way ahead of the angry mobs. Ultimately, scarves and masks will not protect the protesters from identification because facial recognition also includes retinal scans. After all, protesters still need to see. And unlike the 1960s and ’70s, AI and ultra hi-definition video allow for identification of almost anyone through even a partially exposed face. As Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary told Fox News, future job prospects for these protesters may well be irreparably damaged: “When you break the law of the land, you become a criminal. If you think wearing a mask or sunglasses is going to protect you, it doesn’t.”

The constitutionality of invasive identification technology is dicey, and some states have laws that prevent using facial recognition software on people engaged in “constitutionally protected activities,” according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. In 2021, the Sentinel won a Pulitzer Prize for its story, “South Florida Police Quietly Ran Facial Recognition Scans to Identify Peaceful Protesters. Is That Legal?”

The Sunshine State uses software cleverly named FACES, which stands for Face Analysis Comparison & Examination System, a tool that has been around since 2001 and is also used by federal law enforcement. During the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests, Florida law enforcement put FACES in action, as the Sun Sentinel reports:

“Behind the scenes, however, police photographed protesters. And they ran protest-related images through a vast and unregulated facial recognition database, records show. That’s like going through a crowd and inspecting people’s driver’s licenses, which would almost certainly be prohibited as an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment.”

While the constitutionality of all this is being worked out, (and will likely end up at the US Supreme Court) college protests – which in many cases are on private property – continue apace.

This brings us back to the question of who all these protesters are. The reality is that it may take a bit more time, but it’s not all that difficult to find out. The campus unrest of today may be compared to 1968, but there are contrasts – this type of identity software is perhaps the most significant change. Like it or not, technology may have a profound influence over whether the individuals taking part in the anti-Semitic protests will eventually be unmasked.

 

 

Read More From Leesa K. Donner