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Rapaport wanted some attention

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

DOMESTIC ABUSER AND FAILED ACTOR MICHAEL RAPAPORT SAYS THE STUDENTS OF COLUMBIA HAVE DISGRACED NEW YORK. REALLY? WE KIND OF FEEL LIKE HE DISGRACED NEW YORK WHEN HE ASSAULTED CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED ACTRESS LILI TAYLOR.

REACHED FOR COMMENT, RAPAPORT SAID, "DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH. I AM AN IDIOT. I AM A BIG DUMMY. ONE TIME, I PICKED MY NOSE AND IT STARTED BLEEDING AND I THOUGHT THE BUGGER WAS A BRAIN TUMOR. MY BROTHER'S A DOCTOR AND HE ASKED ME, 'CAN YOU EAT IT?' I COULD AND DID. HE SAID, 'THEN, IT'S NOT A BRAIN TUMOR.' THAT'S HOW I DIAGNOSE MY HEALTH EVER SINCE. I FILLED THE TOILET, FOR EXAMPLE, AND WAS AFRAID IT MEANT I HAD COLON CANCER SO I ATE EVERYTHING THAT SPEWED OUT OF ME. SINCE I COULD EAT IT, IT WASN'T TUMORS. I WONDER IF THAT'S WHAT THEY MEAN IN 'KINDERGARDEN COP' WHEN THEY SAY 'IT'S NOT A TUMOR'?"

AS WE ATTEMPTED TO WALK HIM TO THE STOP FOR THE SHORT BUS, RAPAPORT WANTED TO INSIST, "I DON'T HAVE HERPES. I DON'T HAVE HERPES. I ATE WHAT I THOUGHT WAS A HERPE SORE BUT I COULD SWALLOW IT SO I AM CLEAN AND HERPE FREE. I THOUGHT I HAD A MOVIE CAREER BUT I GUESS PLAYING CHARACTERS NAMED 'THE COP' AND 'MAILMAN WITH TAX NOTICE' AND 'DOCKWORKER' DOESN'T COUNT SO I SELL MY PLASMA. I WOULD SELL ME SPERM AND I EVEN TRIED BUT THE WOMAN BEHIND THE COUNTER JUST SHOOK HER HEAD 'NO' AND TOLD ME 'WE AREN'T THAT DESPERATE.' WHAT DO YOU THINK SHE MEANT BY THAT? DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH."

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Today The Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University continues into week two. From Friday's DEMOCRACY NOW!

AMY GOODMAN: Here in New York, riot police moved in on a peaceful student protest encampment, arresting at least 108 people at Columbia. Columbia University President Minouche Shafik called the NYPD to clear the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the campus’s South Lawn, where Columbia and Barnard students had set up one day earlier to demand university leadership divest from Israel. New York Police Chief John Chell said Shafik identified the demonstration as a “clear and present danger,” but that officers found the students to peaceful and cooperative. Shafik warned all students participating in the encampment would be suspended. At least three suspensions of Barnard students were confirmed Thursday before the arrests, including Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Congressmember Ilhan Omar.

Thursday’s showdown with the NYPD was the largest arrest on the Columbia campus since 1968, when police arrested over 700 students protesting the school’s ties to the Vietnam War and its plans to expand in Harlem by building a gymnasium there.

Following the arrests yesterday, students gathered on the campus throughout the night as large protests continued and are ongoing. Students got support from many Columbia faculty online and a visit in person from Union Theological Seminary professor Cornel West, just nearby, who is also a 2024 presidential candidate. Democracy Now! spoke to professor West after he climbed a fence to visit with the encamped protesters.

CORNEL WEST: Well, you know, in light of our stand in deep solidarity with our precious Palestinian brothers and sisters who are undergoing vicious genocide, wrestling with apartheid conditions for so long and still being ethnically cleansed, we want the world to know that their suffering does not have the last word. There is resilience, and there’s a willingness to fight.

And Columbia president ought to be shame on herself that she cannot zero in on an actual genocide taking place before our very eyes, and be concerned about a potential and possible call for genocide of Jews. Nobody here is calling for the genocide of Jews. Nobody is here calling for annihilation. We’re calling for the end of an actual genocide and the end of an actual annihilation.

How sad that Columbia University could teach so many courses on the canonical texts of Western civilization and can’t listen to Diderot or Karl Marx. They can’t listen to a Martin Luther King Jr. They can’t listen to a Muriel Rukeyser. Most importantly, they can’t listen to the cries of our precious Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

So, I’m in deep solidarity with these students. They represent the best, not just of Columbia, not just of the American empire, but the human spirit, fighting in the face of domination and occupation and subjugation, and doing it with tremendous determination.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s presidential candidate and Union Theological Seminary professor Cornel West speaking to Democracy Now! at Columbia University in the midst of the protest. Special thanks to Hana Elias. President Shafik called in the New York police a day after she testified in the U.S. Congress.

Over the weekend, Sarah Huddleston and Shea Vance (COLUMBIA SPECTATOR) reported:

As the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” entered its fourth day on Saturday, dozens of protesters prepared for the University’s second admitted students weekend of the semester by establishing a “People’s University Student Fair” and an “alternative tour” committee.

The encampment remained on South Lawn two days after University President Minouche Shafik ordered a massive police sweep of the demonstration during which the New York Police Department arrested 108 individuals. All individuals had been released from custody as of late Thursday evening.

Spirits remained high on South Lawn throughout the day as protesters intermittently repeated chants like “Minouche Shafik, you’re a clown, we demand that you step down,” and “Say it out, say it clear, liberation is here” while waving small Palestinian flags. Students lounged on the lawn on top of blue tarps, chatting among each other or working on laptops. Toward the north end of the lawn, food and blankets lay in protected piles.

As the action continued over the weekend, so did the increase in support for it. Chimen Keys and Surina Venkat (COLUMBIA SPECTATOR) report:

Over 50 people congregated on Sunday in front of the 115th Street and Broadway entrance to “stand with students and a liberated Palestine” following three protests that drew around 150 people outside of Columbia’s campus along Broadway on Saturday.

Coordinated by People’s Forum NYC, New York City chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement, PAL-Awda NY, and ANSWER Coalition, the protest coincides with the fifth day of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”

Protests led by community members began on Friday after University President Minouche Shafik authorized the New York Police Department to sweep the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” resulting in the arrests of over 100 students.

Sunday’s protests followed the Within Our Lifetime’s “Flood Columbia for Gaza” protest, Uptown for Palestine’s “March Against Displacement,” and the “Stand with the Students” demonstration that took place on Saturday.

While people supported it, officials did not. Instead, officialdom attacked the students. From high offices, they attacked them verbally. Jesse Thomas and Daniel de Vries (WSWS) explain:

Amid a mass mobilization of New York City riot cops and surveillance teams, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, a former cop, attacked pro-Palestinian protestors on Sunday, issuing a statement that ominously warned:

We will not be a city of lawlessness, and those professional agitators seeking to seize the ongoing conflict in the Middle East to sow chaos and division will not succeed.

President Joe Biden added his voice to the increasingly strident, bipartisan attack on the right to protest against war and mass murder, based on the lie that the campuses have become centers of antisemitism. Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s chief arms supplier and accomplice, issued a statement on Sunday saying:

Even in recent days, we’ve seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews. This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous — and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.

In their statements, Democratic officials falsely implied that pro-Palestinian demonstrators were instigating violence. Meanwhile, the Democrats joined with Republican fascists in the House of Representatives to pass a series of bipartisan bills providing $95 billion to continue funding the US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, increase the supply of weapons for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and step up preparations for war against China.

The statements of Biden and Adams make clear that the attack on students at Columbia is not simply a matter of overreach by a university administration, but part of a coordinated political attack aimed at criminalizing and suppressing opposition to the policies of US imperialism.

Last week’s arrest of over 100 Columbia and Barnard students who were carrying out a peaceful encampment to protest the Gaza genocide marked a major escalation in the assault on democratic rights not only in New York, but across the country and internationally.

University President Minouche “Nemat” Shafik first suspended the students and then called the NYPD to remove them for supposedly “trespassing.” Students have reported being held by the police in zip ties for over seven hours.

Protesting a genocide is not attacking Jewish people. Netanyahu, who is Jewish, is carrying out the murders but a protest against him is not a protest against Jewish people. Nor is charging him with corruption -- as the Israeli government has done -- charging Jews around the world with corruption. It's a distinction that's easy to make unless you're just interested in lying and using your lie to silence the truth.

ALJAZEERA reports:

The public opinion poll by Israel’s Yediot Ahronoth media outlet and The Institute for Freedom and Responsibility of Reichman University suggests 85 percent of Israelis have little or no trust in their government.

About 64 percent of Israelis believe their country faces an existential threat, and 65 percent have not been sleeping well since the outbreak of the war, it said.

At least 73 percent of Israelis have grown anxious in the past six months.

So what's the White House response to that? To have Joe Biden attack the Israeli people for 'anti-semetic' sentiment that he sees in the polling results? Where does the nonsense end?

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