Mass movement on US campuses. Eric Francis Coppolino in the 1980s was a student journalist at SUNY Buffalo, during which time he witnessed a student movement which organized all the students of the entire state system, pressing the SUNY Regents to divest the system from the South Africa Apartheid regime. This led to a longer term statewide student organized group acting at a state level on behalf of student interests, which lasted in the early ‘90s before being shredded by the system’s administrators. A few days ago he got a chance to speak to student activists at SUNY Purchase, in the northern suburbs of New York, where there was a particularly large violent crackdown and mass arrest at the beginning of this month. This was connected to a pro-Palestine encampment on campus.
Students at SUNY Purchase hear the legend of South African divestment. In 1985, the entire State University of New York system, led by student president and SUNY trustee Jane McAlevey, divested from South Africa. Eric Francis Coppolino, 5/14/24.
Here is the story as told by Jane McAlevey herself on Democracy Now (second video player down). Knowing and working with Jane were formative experiences for me. Jane is someone I think about every day, who influenced me deeply when I knew her, when I was a university student and we were both about 19-years-old. I modeled much of my leadership style on hers (though she’s a tad more competitive, as you will hear, and she needs to be in her line of work — unionization). When she says “Student Union,” she means the Student Association of the State University (SASU). These articles, from my own publication, Student Leader News Service, will give you pretty good idea what SASU was. [Graphics]
My comment at the page.
Jeffrey Strahl, Lockdown Times, 3PM, 5/15/24.
Excellent work, closing the gap of the dark years in between the 1980s and the present. I didn't know much if anything about the history of the SUNY South Africa Apartheid divestiture movement. Amazing righteous action by Jane McAlevey organizing the chain-in at the SUNY administrative office which forced the Regents to divest.
The Student Association of the State University (SASU) was the right idea at the right time. No surprise that the SUNY hierarchy acted to completely shred it in the late '80s-early '90s.
I need to note that this was not something which happened in a vacuum. This was yet one more step in rolling back the small progress achieved by the "Sixties" movement which maintained momentum well into the '70s, changing aspects of American society, only to succumb to a political and cultural counterrevolution organized very consciously by the powers-that-shouldn't-be via mass media culture and the "education" system.. By the early '90s, American society was rendered self-absorbed and obsessed, rendered infantile in terms of social awareness. A milieu capable of supporting SASU in resisting the powers no longer existed. And this counterrevolution has marched on ever since.
It's actually quite miraculous that the events at SUNY Purchase and SUNY New Paltz happened at all. At first, i was a bit annoyed with your audience for being apparently unable to focus and pay attention, but i came to enjoy their participatory fervor. These kids are alright!! They understand in a big way where things are at, even if they haven't figured out all the details. Such understanding is of course very important, but having an intuitive affinity for a willingness to do something is an absolute opening requirement.
Some of this took me time traveling. I went to high school (Bronx Science) a block away from Lehman College, a campus of the City University of New York (CUNY), which you reported re being a major center of activity, i assume you meant the '80s. Back when i went to Bronx Sci, that campus was still called Hunter College Bronx Campus. And i went to college at the CUNY's City College of New York campus, the flagship of the CUNY system (the "college" part of the name is an artifact of the naming having happened in 1847, long before terms like "city college" became associated with junior colleges).
And, today is 5/15/24, the 76th anniversary of the event which in Israel is celebrated as “Independence Day” while among Palestinians everywhere it is commemorated as The Nakba, The Catastrophe. This was simply a formal beginning to a process which had already been going on materially since February of that year (1948), as related by Ilan Pappe in his book “1948,” and in many ways already being planned since the formation of the British Mandate in 1919 and even the earlier Zionist settlement of the land. Meanwhile, the number of people forced to move from Rafah is up to 450,000 (remember 100,000 as of last Friday?!, and another 100,000 forced to move out of Northern Gaza, re-invaded by the IDF. The Catastrophe hits new heights.
Israeli and US/European media are trying to push a story that the UN has revised greatly downward the death toll in Gaza. Utter LIES!
Did the UN really say Israel has killed fewer people in Gaza? Changes in how the UN calculates Gaza’s casualties have been cited as evidence of bias. They aren’t. Al Jazeera Staff, 5/14/24.
Has the UN really said fewer people were killed by Israel in Gaza? No, is the short answer.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) published on May 8 an infographic that referred to a figure of 34,844 total Palestinian deaths. Below that, it said of the deaths: “24,686 identified as of 30 April as: 10,006 men, 4,959 women, 7,797 children, 1,924 elderly”. The graphic used the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) figures and included a note that figures were “Not including more than 10,000 reported missing or under the rubble”.
The figures for bodies that had been identified were seized on by many media outlets as the UN “revising down” its estimates of the number of women and children Israel had killed in its assault on Gaza. Rather, the UN was publishing the latest information from Gaza’s MoH about its progress in a massive effort to identify the dead.
The UN confirmed this on Monday, when spokesperson Farhan Haq, responding to a question from Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo, said that the updated breakdown was only in reference to the smaller 24,686 death toll. “There’s about another 10,000 plus bodies who still have to be fully identified, and so then the details of those – which of those are children, which of those are women – that will be reestablished once the full identification process is complete,” Haq said at the UN in New York. [There are bodies that have been recovered, and does not included people under the rubble]
The estimated number for the total number of people killed by Israel in Gaza and those missing under the rubble or elsewhere has never changed. As of Tuesday, the total number stands at 35,173 people killed by Israel in Gaza since the war erupted more than seven months ago. Eighty-two of those people were killed in the last 24 hours.
All casualty numbers – identified and unidentified deaths – as well as missing people are generated by the Gaza MoH. Critics often criticise the MoH for being administered by Hamas, implying that its figures are not to be trusted. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated on Tuesday that it has full confidence in the MoH’s numbers. MoH statistics have also been verified by Human Rights Watch and used by the United States Department of State in past conflicts and as recently as March 2023, despite US President Joe Biden questioning those numbers without evidence.
The so-called “new number” of 24,686 refers only to bodies that have been identified – of those, 7,797 were children, 4,959 women and 1,924 were elderly people. This means that more than 10,000 recovered bodies are still unidentified. Moreover, an estimated 10,000 people remain missing, most likely buried under the rubble across Gaza.
“The fact we now have 25,000 identified people is a step forward,” WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told the press in Geneva on Tuesday. “There’s about another 10,000 plus bodies who still have to be fully identified, and so then the details of those – which of those are children, which of those are women – that will be re-established once the full identification process is complete,” UN spokesperson Haq said.
Israel has come under consistent international pressure over the death toll in Gaza. Some media outlets seized on the number breakdown as the UN having revised its numbers to a “more realistic figure” – without clarifying – as evidence of anti-Israeli bias within the UN. In recent days, Egypt – with whom Israel has had a truce since 1979 – has joined South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide.
During an appearance on the Call Me Back podcast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to reference the change, saying the Israeli army had “been able to keep the ratio of civilians to combatants killed … {to} a ratio of about one to one”. “Fourteen thousand have been killed, combatants,” he continued, “and probably around 16,000 civilians have been killed.”{Liar, liar, pants on fire]
And, Electronic Intifada’s weekly news show. I’ve gotten to the 1:15:00 mark.
Breaking news and analysis on day 222 of Gaza's Al-Aqsa Flood | The Electronic Intifada Podcast, 5/15/24, two hours and 54 minutes.
00:00 Introduction
01:25 Nora Barrows-Friedman delivers news roundup from Gaza
26:52 Dr. Khaled Dawas on providing medical care in Gaza
01:04:39 Jon Elmer covers fighting by Palestinian resistance forces in Rafah, Gaza City and Jabaliya
02:18:15 Group discussion on Hasan Nasrallah's speech and how Israel has lost the war
My comments. Like i said, the genocide keeps getting more horrible by the day. It will continue to do so as long as a world which fancies itself as “civilized” allows this to go one, bleating that “it’s so complex, it’s been going on for many centuries, i don’t know what to think” CRAP! Not complex at all, there is a widening occupation and on-going ethnic cleansing, and one side is doing ALL of that. What many US supporters of Israel really want is for the Palestinians to just leave and move away to “other places where Arabs live,” as if all Arabs are the same, living in interchangeable habitats. Dr Dawas, a British man of Palestinian birth, provides yet one more heartbreaking eyewitness account from a hospital, this time Al Aqsa.
And, Joe Biden initiates trade war measures aimed at China. Reminder: every major trade war in history has led into a global war. True in the 1910s,, truth in the 1930s, and the same global capitalist crisis dynamics which were in play then are in play today.
Biden slaps new tariffs on Chinese imports, ratcheting trade war. The US president said China’s financial support for its businesses was ‘cheating’ and not competition. Al Jazeera Staff, 5/14/24.
President Joe Biden has slapped major new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminium and medical equipment, taking potshots at Donald Trump along the way as he embraced a strategy that’s increasing friction between the world’s two largest economies. The Democratic president said on Tuesday that Chinese government subsidies ensure the nation’s companies do not have to turn a profit, giving them an unfair advantage in global trade. “American workers can outwork and outcompete anyone as long as the competition is fair,” Biden said in the White House Rose Garden. “But for too long, it hasn’t been fair. For years, the Chinese government has poured state money into Chinese companies … it’s not competition, it’s cheating.”
China immediately promised retaliation. Its Ministry of Commerce said Beijing was opposed to the tariff hikes by the United States and would take measures to defend its interests. Biden will keep tariffs put in place by his Republican predecessor Donald Trump while ratcheting up others, including a quadrupling of EV duties to more than 100 percent and doubling the duties on semiconductor tariffs to 50 percent.
The new measures affect $18bn in imported Chinese goods including steel and aluminium, semiconductors, electric vehicles, critical minerals, solar cells and cranes, the White House said. The EV figure, while headline-grabbing, may have more political than practical impact in the US, which imports very few Chinese EVs. The US imported $427bn in goods from China in 2023 and exported $148bn to the world’s number-two economy, according to the US Census Bureau, a trade gap that has persisted for decades and become an ever more sensitive subject in Washington.
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the revised tariffs were justified because China was stealing US intellectual property. But Tai recommended tariff exclusions for hundreds of industrial machinery import categories from China, including 19 for solar product manufacturing equipment. The tariffs come in the middle of a heated campaign between Biden and Trump, his Republican predecessor, to show who’s tougher on China.
Asked to respond to Trump’s comments that China was eating the US’s lunch, Biden said of his rival, “He’s been feeding them a long time.” The Democrat said Trump had failed to crack down on Chinese trade abuses as he had pledged he would do during his presidency. Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s press secretary, called the new tariffs a “weak and futile attempt” to distract from Biden’s own support for EVs in the United States, which Trump says will lead to layoffs at car factories. Administration officials said their measures are combined with domestic investment in key industries and unlikely to worsen a bout of inflation that has already angered US voters.
Biden has struggled to convince voters of the efficacy of his economic policies despite a backdrop of low unemployment and above-trend economic growth. A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month showed Trump had a seven percentage-point edge over Biden on the economy. Analysts have warned that a trade tiff could raise costs for EVs overall, hurting Biden’s climate goals and his aim to create manufacturing jobs.
[Jeff: EVs actually do jack sh*t as far as the growing climate chaos. Their production and the raw materials extraction which they require mean MORE emissions of global warming gases and more pressure on dwindling energy and critical raw materials supplies.]
Biden has said he wants to win this era of competition with China but not to launch a trade war. He has worked in recent months to ease tensions in one-on-one talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.Both 2024 US presidential candidates have departed from the free-trade consensus that once reigned in Washington, a period capped by China’s joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. Trump’s broader imposition of tariffs during his 2017-2021 presidency kicked off a tariff war with China.
As part of the long-awaited tariff update, Biden will increase tariffs this year from 25 percent to 100 percent on EVs, bringing total duties to 102.5 percent, from 7.5 percent to 25 percent on lithium-ion EV batteries and other battery parts and from 25 percent to 50 percent on photovoltaic cells used to make solar panels. Some critical minerals will have their tariffs raised from nothing to 25 percent. More tariffs will follow in 2025 and 2026 on semiconductors, as well as lithium-ion batteries that are not used in electric vehicles, graphite and permanent magnets, as well as rubber medical and surgical gloves.
A number of lawmakers have called for massive hikes on Chinese vehicle tariffs or an outright ban over data privacy concerns. There are relatively few Chinese-made light-duty vehicles being imported now. he United Auto Workers, a politically important union that endorsed Biden, said the tariff moves would ensure that “the transition to electric vehicles is a just transition.”
[The notion of such a transition is a dangerous delusion. Not enough energy and raw materials left in the world to implement it]
Ending this edition, AE911Truth’s show Free Fall interviews a key person in AE911Truth, but not about 9/11. Rather, this is about his experience being involved in Operation Mockingbird, an operation the CIA initiated right at its inception in 1947, its very first op, intended to plant friendly stories in key US media outlets and monitor the news which these outlets in general furnish to the public. It was the subject of Senate hearings (The Church Committee) in 1976, and supposedly the op was terminated. But in reality, it never was, and is still ongoing. Some of the analysis of overall events in the world (aside from 9/11) is naive and misinformed, but the core part, the disinformation campaign we are constantly being bombarded by, is DAMN REAL. And so are efforts at subverting and shredding current opposition movements.
When a Mockingbird Sings, AE911Truth Staff, 5/13/24.
Nothing New Under The Sun — I Created "Fake News" Many Decades Before It Ever Became A "Popularized" Talking Point For The Media In The Left/Right Bread & Circus Distraction, As It Had Been Done Decades Prior Did you know that a member of the AE911Truth staff used to work with U.S. intelligence, manipulating the news? Today he’s going to tell you all about it!
In this episode of 9/11 Free Fall, AE911Truth’s director of marketing and Board member, Jeff Long, joins Andy Steele to discuss his past work with U.S. Air Force Intelligence, manipulating the news and planting false information in the media on behalf of Uncle Sam during the Cold War. He also explains the difficulties he faced getting out of the dark intelligence world when he decided that his moral convictions wouldn’t allow him to continue.
Jeff: story is part of a much bigger picture of media control within the United States, from the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird [Link] to the corporate ownership of most of what we watch, hear, and read in our country. This keeps the flow of information controlled and the truth about September 11, 2001, suppressed. Andy and Jeff provide chilling examples of how pervasive is the coordination of our media and how strong is their power to reshape our perceptions to suit government agendas.
This episode is a crash course on how the media works and why – despite the overwhelming evidence of controlled demolition at the World Trade Center on 9/11 – the battle to get the truth out is needed more than ever. [Embedded video.]
Jeff. The video can be viewed on You Tube here,
When a Mockingbird Sings, AE911Truth, 5/14/24, an hour and 6 minutes.
The URLs which came out blank are below, Eric posted a link to his Substack separately. I don't know what happened, the URLs work perfectly OK on my email program. Any ideas?
[EDIT to add: Things are stranger. I decided to try something different, so i clicked on "edit," was gonna use a bypass. But the blanks all got filled!! It's totally OK now]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW1XN9lz1Zg
Breaking news and analysis on day 222 of Gaza's Al-Aqsa Flood | The Electronic Intifada Podcast, 5/15/24, two hours and 54 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emJEX57bEG8
When a Mockingbird Sings, AE911Truth, 5/14/24, an hour and 6 minutes.
Here is what Jeffrey was linking to
https://planetwavesfm.substack.com/p/students-at-suny-purchase-hear-the