A delegation from Hamas is visiting the Kremlin, being feted and greeted there. Moscow is issuing calls for a ceasefire and blaming the US for “an increase in tensions between Israel and Palestine”. There’s no observable difference between the proclamations of the leading BLMers and the Kremlin’s position on the issue.
There are many people who should be feeling pretty stupid right now but they are too stupid to see what’s happening.
Clarissa's Blog 
Mike Johnson doesn’t have a great record on Ukraine, but I don’t think he’s gonna be a JD Vance on this issue
https://x.com/OstapYarysh/status/1717538514139500980
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Why would I single out Putin when UN chief to Security Council claims that 7.10 “did not happen in a vacuum,” because Palestinians have been subjected to 56 years of “suffocating occupation” ? Antonio Guterres is also “deeply concerned about clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza.”
Another great Israeli friend is Tayyip Erdogan, who said that “Hamas is not a terrorist organization” but rather “a liberation group fighting to protect its lands.”
Don’t want to write too much , so just share a couple of things from the last days with you and the readers:
— IDF including tanks ventured into Gaza the previous night, destroyed something and returned to Israel. We are likely to continue with such brief excursions and air attacks for some time. Hamas reacts with “massive rocket barrage targets Tel Aviv, central Israel”. Yesterday a rocket fell into my city too and my mother’s best friend in another central city reported they were told to remain locked inside because of a possible security incident. Thankfully, after half an hour the residents were told all was fine.
— Around 120,000 Israelis living close to the borders (the Lebanon border in the north & Gaza in south) had to be evacuated. “Hotels, boarding houses and hostels are used as temporary housing, the stay in which is paid for by the state.” The voiced plans predict they won’t be able to return home till the end of 2023.
— Hamas keeps demanding fuel since it needs it for military purposes. While Gaza hospitals and UNRWA say they won’t be able to continue functioning w/o fuel, “IDF says Gaza photos show half million liters of fuel held by Hamas.” I read on telegram channel: “The entire huge system of tunnels that terrorists have been building for decades cannot exist without lighting and, most importantly, forced ventilation. Without which, underground structures will turn into a banal gas chamber.”
— Found a nice website of “PSR is an independent nonprofit institution and think tank of policy analysis and academic research … registered as a nonprofit institution in the Palestinian Ministry of Justice.” I looked at polls conducted in the year 2023 (a summary of 2-3 sentences of each poll) in their Index PSR Polls:
https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/154
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It’s not you I’m worried about but the crowd of facile individuals who must now somehow square in their tiny, atrophied brains that their dearly beloved Putin is standing with the 1,700 woke sociology profs who spoke out in defense of Hamas.
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And spineless Israeli leadership still drag their feet in giving even the slightest of support to Ukraine in fear of angering Russia. I bet they are feeling just like the dumbasses that they are.
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“spineless Israeli leadership still drag their feet in giving even the slightest of support to Ukraine”
In many ways Israelis are like slower Germans. It took Germany a few months to get its head out of its ass and give up a working, productive relationship with russia (cause russia don’t play that).
Israelis, being slower and further away….. just now starting to catch up (or maybe Bibi is figuring out how to use russia to keep his death grip on power).
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I think such university assignments are a natural result of those education trends:
// Woke Oregon school chiefs suspend need for high schoolers to prove math, reading and writing skills to graduate for FIVE MORE YEARS – to bolster minority students who ‘don’t test well’ […] education officials are now considering ‘equity grading’ instead of the traditional A to F scale.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12664399/Woke-Oregon-school-chiefs-suspend-need-high-schoolers-prove-math-reading-writing-skills-graduate-FIVE-YEARS-bolster-minority-students-dont-test-well.html
One would not expect ‘equity’ students to be able to write a normal essay, but attending a demonstration or watching a movie would be OK. (Sorry, if I sound too extreme, I understand most students want to learn, but what are they taught? When I studied at Israeli universities, nobody would think of giving academic credits for political events.)
Interestingly, nobody thinks of cancelling bagrut exams (high school graduation exams) in Israel despite real difficulties. Israeli universities won’t accept students w/o normal grades in bagrut, let alone w/o bagrut at all.
Students near our borders will receive help, such as more choice in tests or ‘mikud’ (tested on less material), yet they’ll take the usual tests and be able to apply to universities.
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I told my closest friends at work that, if they know what’s good for them, they’ll never again fail a black student even if he never showed up for class. We are a short distance away from show trials of the “racists” who give many grades under a C to black students.
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// never again fail a black student even if he never showed up for class
I hope it’s an exaggeration.
“Never give under a C” looks like another stage in the destruction of high education.
You mentioned how trans narrative is under attack, why not take the mutual goal of promoting black students and counterattack by showing how the mainstream approach of some institutions hurts underprivileged students?
Arestovich keeps telling that Israel / Ukraine need to take initiative rather than merely reacting to enemy’s steps. Looks like some people in American high education need to do it too.
\ A professor who refers to Hamas as right-wing.
Imo, it’s neither right-wing nor left-wing, it’s terrorist-wing. 🙂
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No exaggeration at all. We were told last week that the only reason why black students fail is if the professor is racist. Even if the professor is black.
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\ No exaggeration at all. We were told last week
By BLM lecturer you mentioned?
If so, then it’s even more crucial to start this counterattack now, no?
I do not and it’s not my place to advise anyone risk their job. (Feel need to stress it here.)
It’s just I am shocked why saying common sense things and turning the table on such narratives is so hard that nobody does it.
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Yep. This was organized by the administration, the attendance was obligatory.
I very sincerely don’t care right now. If Americans want to play these games, good luck to them. Why nobody (including me) wants to say anything is that if you do, you will be called a racist and forced to undergo reeducation. I barely managed to stabilize my blood pressure after that BLM talk. I can’t dedicate the rest of my life to defending myself from accusations.
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I mean saying things like “the people promoting XYZ present themselves as champions of black people, yet do not want to do the hard job of finding precisely what help African-Americans need. They sweep problems under the rug. Instead of specially designed remedial courses that disadvantaged students need, they get speeches and their professors are blamed for failures in our society and educational system. Speeches are free, while additional courses would require money, hiring more lecturers, etc.”
Obviously, you could word it much better, being in that system.
If you had power, what would you do differently to increase the percentage of Spanish and black students who graduate? (I remember you mentioned that female students don’t have this problem.) Is it possible at all?
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I’d introduce admissions criteria and stop accepting people who can’t possibly succeed in college. But that’s racist. Everything is racist if it leads to disparate outcomes.
The Left found a weapon against which nobody has any defense. In America being branded a racist is гражданская смерть. I don’t know how to say it in English. And nobody can afford to risk it.
And by the way, it’s eerie but the little speech you posted is almost verbatim what I said at the Diversity Day on Tuesday. There were several black people in the front row and they were nodding so enthusiastically, I was afraid they’d hurt themselves.
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Do you think it’s any better at higher-rated colleges that have admissions criteria?
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It’s definitely easier not to fail students who can read.
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\ I’d introduce admissions criteria and stop accepting people who can’t possibly succeed in college. But that’s racist. Everything is racist if it leads to disparate outcomes.
I bet the real reason is that colleges want to collect money from those “suckers” (the way colleges see them). Why should we expect a con artist to care about his victims when they struggle with loans after flunking out of college? When they miss an opportunity to get any education at all, not necessary a college one, since they are older and need to fully support themselves or even their own families?
Follow the money.
Of course, any attempt to stop the scam will be fought off with charges of racism. Those con artists found the best defense and won’t let go easily.
To what extent is this explanation correct in your eyes?
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This is absolutely spot-on. We are effectively defrauding the state of Illinois (which pays these students’ tuition). It’s a money extracting scheme. We have to do it because the state dramatically reduced our funding over the past 15 years, so we have to extract money from it through these hopeless students.
What are we supposed to do, though? If we don’t do this, we close down operations. There is no other source of income. Yes, we are playing a very dishonest game but “the victim” in this case (which is the state) painted us into a corner with its disinvestment policies.
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“in America being branded a racist”
I stopped paying attention to the word in any meaningful sense back in 2015-16… and whenever someone started talking about ‘systemic racism’ I mentally substituted “I have severe unaddressed mental health issues”
Works out pretty well…
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At least you haven’t reached the point where you have to write recommendations for black professors who don’t show up for class.
https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/charles-simkins-remembered
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We have, unfortunately. “Missed opportunities for transformation” is a very familiar turn of phrase. If you deny you are a racist, that’s proof you are a racist. It’s where we all are right now. Congratulations to all of us.
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Some members of the American Left have also woken up. Look at Maurice Isserman, a Ferguson Professor of History, who has a new book ” Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism” coming in June 2024 (and he isn’t even a Jew as I suspected at first to reach this conclusion):
// Why I Just Quit DSA
After over four decades as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, one of the group’s founding members is leaving in sorrow and anger.
…
What do I mean by “entryists”? In left-wing parlance, the term refers to tightly organized groups who, without sharing the beliefs of larger and more loosely organized bodies, join and proceed to either wreck or, where possible, capture them for ends at odds with the spirit and purpose of the original members. Without descending too deeply into the weeds of sectarian history, entryism has been a recurring phenomenon on the American left since the 1930s.
…
Concern for Palestine, entirely legitimate in itself, also served other purposes for DSA’s new sectarian leadership, furnishing a convenient stick to beat DSA’s moderate wing if it wasn’t willing to embrace the most extreme positions on the Palestinian question—up to and including denying Israel’s right to continued existence.
…
So why am I quitting DSA? There are many reasons. But in the end, the most important […] An organization that can’t take a stand condemning a right-wing terrorist group that set out to murder as many Jewish civilians, including children and infants, as it can lay its hands on, has forfeited the right to call itself democratic socialist.
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/quit-dsa-gaza-israel/
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A professor who refers to Hamas as right-wing. I understand that he’s doing it rhetorically as a way of saying that Hamas is bad but still.
The DSA is a horrible, shameful organization, and I’m glad at least someone quit.
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I think I understood what is meant by referring to Hamas as right-wing.
If Left today concentrates on oppressed minority groups rather than on workers, the new “Capital” is DEI.
Hamas is hardly inclusive, so, as an enemy of DEI, it is defined as right-wing in the new terminology.
Btw, Hamas is shooting at Palestinians who try to leave northern Gaza.
“Israel: Hamas’s main operations base is under Shifa Hospital in Gaza City
… [it is] Strip’s largest hospital … hundreds of terrorists flooded there after Oct. 7 massacres”
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Hamas isn’t American, so the American distinctions of right and left are completely irrelevant. What the guy is saying is that Hamas isn’t progressive.
What he doesn’t get is that Hamas is extremely progressive in the sense that it’s goal is creating chaos and destroying one of the most successful nation-states in history. Yes, it’s anti-gay. But progressives support gays only as long as they can use them as cudgels to destroy the social order. Once a more useful cudgel is found, the gays can bite it. And we are seeing it right now when gays and lesbians are the strongest opponents of the trans agenda which they reasonably see as gay conversion therapy.
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Do you remember paintings by Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi? She immigrated to Israel at the age of 14 from Ukraine and depicted “everyday scenes she observed throughout her childhood in the Soviet Ukraine.” I shared her paintings on Ukrainian / Russian war too.
After 7.10 she created “October 7, 2023” inspired by Picasso.
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// “the victim” in this case (which is the state)
The victim in this case are those disadvantaged students.
// What are we supposed to do, though? If we don’t do this, we close down operations.
For instance, to fire all diversity officers and most highly paid bureaucrats, while cutting salary of those who remain. You previously said your university has plenty of those people.
Another step would’ve been to publicize your case and explain voters how the system of high education is destroyed and why their children need more funding to flow to universities.
So the real problem lies in disinvestment policies, the “old good” American conservative ideology – the desire to cut taxes (especially for the rich) and reduce government spending (especially on the poor).
Yet, the abysmal results are blamed on the American Left and its obsession with DEI. (I understand those DEI lecturers play a role to make your life worse, but the source of the problem lies elsewhere.)
Of course, most of the Left seems glad to play the role of a whipping boy and is too preoccupied with garbage to notice what’s going on. Bernard Sanders tried to return to the roots, yet failed.
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The problem is that all these DEI bureaucracies are a state requirement. Illinois is a deep blue state, and the state legislature has been Democrat since forever. This isn’t a left vs right thing. It’s neoliberalism.
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