True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 374: Quad Squad
Aired: 2024-04-29
Duration: 01:24:48


=== Brace, You Know So Much About God (02:35) ===

[00:00:03]  Hello, this is whoosh.
[00:00:07]  This is Mordecai Moshe Silverberg Goldstein Platinum Owitz.
[00:00:15]  War Correspondent for JNS and Jewish Telegraph Agency.
[00:00:24]  I am here on the Yale Quad where for days pro-Khamas protesters have been assailing our vaunted institutions with rifles, tanks,
[00:00:41]  and bombs of words threatening myself and the many other sensitive young lads at this antisemitism-versity.
[00:00:58]  I fear for my life, my safety, my education and my kippah, which has been knocked off by the bloviating crowd yelling at me to please put my penis back in my pants.
[00:01:18]  But it's warm out and my weed is sweaty and I don't want to make my trousers damned.
[00:01:28]  I can try that again.
[00:01:29]  Oh, God.
[00:01:34]  I really didn't know how to end that.
[00:01:55]  Yeah, I was really excited to see where you were going, Platinumberg, platinum.
[00:01:59]  There's Platinum Awood, platinum Awitz.
[00:02:02]  Well, we're waiting.
[00:02:03]  This is the thing.
[00:02:04]  People are always like, Brace, you know so much about God.
[00:02:08]  When's what's the message?
[00:02:09]  People send them.
[00:02:10]  People say that to me in private.
[00:02:12]  People say it to me in private yeah okay uh, they say, brace, you know so much about God.
[00:02:17]  I kind of feel like you know him and actually sometimes when i'm talking to you, I finally kind of feel like you maybe am him.
[00:02:22]  Uh, when are they releasing the new Jewish Messiah?
[00:02:25]  And I tell you, when he comes, that will finally.
[00:02:29]  We have Silverberg, we have Goldberg, we will have finally a Platinum Berg.
[00:02:34]  That is gonna be the Jewish Messiah.
[00:02:36]  That'll be nice.
[00:02:37]  I like platinum.

=== Vape in the Grassy Area (10:01) ===

[00:02:38]  You do.
[00:02:39]  It's the most precious of metals.
[00:02:41]  I love it.
[00:02:41]  It's got a great sheen.
[00:02:42]  Platinum yeah, I love it.
[00:02:44]  When a record hits it, It's too malleable.
[00:02:48]  It's a little soft.
[00:02:48]  Yeah, you're not supposed to polish it for those reasons.
[00:02:50]  Yeah, well, I don't do that anyways.
[00:02:52]  I think all things should rust.
[00:02:53]  My name is Brace Belden.
[00:02:56]  I'm Liz.
[00:02:57]  We are, of course, joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[00:03:00]  Again, I wanted to say Professor Young Chomsky.
[00:03:02]  Professor.
[00:03:04]  We can't say that.
[00:03:05]  We are joined by Professor Young Chomsky.
[00:03:09]  And the podcast is called Truanon.
[00:03:12]  Beep.
[00:03:12]  School's in session.
[00:03:13]  Back to school.
[00:03:15]  Bitch.
[00:03:16]  I want to tell you.
[00:03:18]  I don't know why I said that.
[00:03:23]  Now, listen up, Chuckle Fucks.
[00:03:26]  Yep.
[00:03:27]  No, no, you're going with that one.
[00:03:29]  Listen up, Chucklefucks.
[00:03:30]  Listen, you've got two people here hosting this show.
[00:03:35]  Didn't graduate college.
[00:03:37]  And we are here to lecture your asses.
[00:03:39]  Well, I'm not going to say I graduated college, but I did go to college.
[00:03:45]  Yeah, you showed up yesterday.
[00:03:47]  Oh.
[00:03:49]  And you could technically say I got into Columbia University.
[00:03:53]  You did get into Columbia University.
[00:03:54]  First of all, congratulations.
[00:03:56]  Thank you so much.
[00:03:57]  It's been a long time coming up.
[00:03:58]  My thesis advisor, Hillary Clinton, of course, obviously you know that I've been engaged in freelance research on how to extract the fear gene from babies while scaring them and use it to make myself live longer.
[00:04:11]  And that was under Shay David, right?
[00:04:14]  Shy, Shay David.
[00:04:15]  You can't have a name that rhymes like that.
[00:04:17]  Shy David.
[00:04:18]  Shy David.
[00:04:20]  However, it's pronounced.
[00:04:22]  I'm shy.
[00:04:23]  You can't have a name that rhymes.
[00:04:25]  You imagine how goaded it must be for that guy to go to a club and talk to the most beautiful, like Blazian woman and be like, hey, what's up?
[00:04:34]  I'm shy.
[00:04:35]  Chicks love it when you do shit like that.
[00:04:38]  I'm shy.
[00:04:39]  I'm just shy.
[00:04:40]  I'm shy.
[00:04:40]  I'm just kind of shy.
[00:04:42]  I'm just fucking shy.
[00:04:43]  Okay, you were at Columbia.
[00:04:44]  You got in.
[00:04:45]  I went to Columbia Antisemitism University.
[00:04:49]  And, well, let's actually talk a little bit about Columbia's been in the news.
[00:04:53]  It has.
[00:04:55]  It has.
[00:04:56]  My God.
[00:04:57]  Every time I open the damn newspaper to cover up the fact that I'm not wearing any clothes on the subway, Columbia, Columbia, Columbia.
[00:05:05]  Yes, and their hatred of Jews.
[00:05:06]  Their hatred of the Yehudim type people.
[00:05:10]  Liz, I want you to describe me in one word physically.
[00:05:15]  Oh.
[00:05:16]  You know what it is.
[00:05:18]  What am I supposed to say?
[00:05:21]  Handsome.
[00:05:21]  Oh, that's nice.
[00:05:23]  I look like a fucking Dare Sturmer character.
[00:05:26]  You know what?
[00:05:26]  No, you keep saying this about yourself, and I don't think you should say that.
[00:05:30]  My nose hooks into my mouth.
[00:05:31]  No.
[00:05:33]  Well, thank you for saying that.
[00:05:34]  But I'm just saying, I've got a big schnauz.
[00:05:36]  I would say, I think it's fair to say that I'm visibly Jewish.
[00:05:41]  No?
[00:05:42]  I have no comment.
[00:05:43]  Young Chomsky?
[00:05:45]  I mean, it's relative, right?
[00:05:46]  You go to some of these like pro-Israel things, you see some real examples.
[00:05:50]  Specimens.
[00:05:51]  Yeah.
[00:05:52]  You're like, I didn't know we got like that.
[00:05:54]  But I would say, I would say incredible advancements in posture.
[00:05:58]  To the average college, to the average college-age student, when they see me, they see a guy who is going to make it in Jobiz, if you know what I mean.
[00:06:06]  And so I so yesterday, a member of the Palestinian youth movement named, I guess I'll say her name, Nas got me into Columbia University.
[00:06:21]  That's a cool name.
[00:06:23]  Yeah, not the rapper.
[00:06:25]  I was thinking basketball player, but different person.
[00:06:30]  But she got me.
[00:06:32]  And let me tell you, they have a big fucking campus.
[00:06:35]  Columbia?
[00:06:36]  Yeah.
[00:06:36]  It's crazy that you've never been up there.
[00:06:39]  Why would I have gone there?
[00:06:40]  Because it's literally in the city that you live in.
[00:06:42]  I understand that, but what circumstances would have gotten me to the campus of Columbia University?
[00:06:48]  I don't know.
[00:06:49]  Exploration, interest, intrigue.
[00:06:52]  I think it would be a lot of fun.
[00:06:52]  Do you love walking about?
[00:06:54]  I do.
[00:06:54]  I've been near there before.
[00:06:55]  Did you ever go to the Hungarian Pastry Shop?
[00:06:57]  I did not, but I did.
[00:06:58]  I saw when they did the Blessing of the Animals in the big old fucking church that was right near there.
[00:07:04]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:07:04]  That's also across the street from the Hungarian.
[00:07:07]  Yeah, I got some soul food when I was there last time.
[00:07:10]  Very good.
[00:07:10]  I don't know why you guys.
[00:07:12]  But I'd never been on the university campus before.
[00:07:15]  I realized I haven't actually been on, I've been on the Princeton campus, I guess.
[00:07:19]  I've walked through that.
[00:07:20]  But I haven't really been on a lot of college campuses before.
[00:07:23]  And boy, they have some big buildings.
[00:07:24]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:07:25]  Big, expensive buildings.
[00:07:27]  But what I was essentially expecting to find, even though I feel like I am a fairly immune to like taking the news very seriously, but I expected to find at least a very disruptive encampment.
[00:07:39]  Yeah, you were looking to get beat up.
[00:07:41]  I was looking to get my ass fucking kicked by a 19-year-old college student.
[00:07:44]  No, but like, you know, obviously I know that like the quad or whatever they're going to have is bigger than it might have been at the community college that I briefly attended in San Francisco.
[00:07:53]  But I, you know, I expected them to like have the whole thing or something, this big, disruptive, crazy like encampment, like Occupy style, like really messy, disgusting, blah, blah, blah.
[00:08:04]  Sure.
[00:08:05]  And then I get there and it looks like there's just school is like a lot of security, a lot of security.
[00:08:12]  And I had to get in through somewhat clandestine means through the Hillary Clinton School.
[00:08:18]  And there was like a picket line of, I think, grad students who were trying to get people to like other grad student teachers to sign on to like do a grade strike.
[00:08:28]  Yeah.
[00:08:29]  And then on there was like a like a grassy area and then like a little like a big like sidewalk paved thing and then another grassy area and the encampment was on the other grassy area and it was just that.
[00:08:42]  And like, I was really confused because I kept reading an article after article from the White House from Netanyahu, all these different people that Columbia had ground to a halt, that it was impossible to take classes there, that there were vicious, violent anti-Semites roaming around, possibly.
[00:09:00]  Jewish people, not welcome.
[00:09:01]  Jewish people stay home.
[00:09:04]  Exactly.
[00:09:04]  Yeah.
[00:09:05]  Like, you were there is.
[00:09:06]  It's crazy for you as a Jewish man to brave such a situation.
[00:09:10]  Well, imagine my surprise when I walk into their encampment and it was very cute.
[00:09:15]  There was like professors sort of like letting people in and out, like kind of gray-haired people and protecting the students.
[00:09:21]  Yeah.
[00:09:22]  And it's just a bunch of Hebrews standing around, a bunch of guys in fucking yarmulcas.
[00:09:27]  And I was like, oh, okay.
[00:09:28]  You're like, wait, where are my Hamas supporters?
[00:09:31]  I thought we were doing jihad.
[00:09:32]  There was just like, it was like, there was a shit ton of visible Jews at this motherfucker, which of course they will say like, oh, these are their token Jews, blah, But the fact of the matter is, is like there are a lot of Jews at this, which is something I don't want to grapple with.
[00:09:47]  I stayed there for about three, four hours.
[00:09:50]  I had to get back to, I had an appointment.
[00:09:52]  I had to get back to Brooklyn in the evening.
[00:09:54]  But it was, you know, they had like a bunch of tents.
[00:09:57]  It was very clean.
[00:09:58]  They had like a no-drinking, no smoking rule.
[00:10:01]  Did they let you vape?
[00:10:02]  Oh, yeah.
[00:10:03]  Well, you can vape anywhere.
[00:10:04]  You can vape in a plane.
[00:10:05]  Like, you just do it.
[00:10:06]  Well, no, you just do it.
[00:10:07]  But I'm saying, like.
[00:10:09]  I would say it was probably okay.
[00:10:10]  It's just vapor.
[00:10:12]  There's nothing wrong with it.
[00:10:13]  It's legal.
[00:10:14]  But no.
[00:10:15]  Well, technically not this.
[00:10:16]  But yeah, they had like a little place where people like listen to a lecture.
[00:10:22]  There was like a professor doing a lecture, which is crazy because I was like, I thought the whole point of this is that you are not going to school, but opinions differ on how cool school is.
[00:10:30]  And it was just like a bunch of very like nice young people sitting around working on stuff and talking and like feeding people and doing like little education sessions.
[00:10:44]  It was possibly the least threatening place I've ever been in my life.
[00:10:49]  Yeah.
[00:10:49]  I once, one of my few other experiences in college is I once played a show in Isla Vista outside Santa Barbara.
[00:10:57]  The frat island.
[00:10:58]  Yeah, of course.
[00:10:58]  And I saw a guy walking down the street.
[00:11:00]  And that's for incel activity.
[00:11:01]  Well, yeah, exactly.
[00:11:03]  I had stolen, my friends and I had stolen a bunch of beer from this party.
[00:11:06]  We were like teenagers.
[00:11:08]  And the people who had the party beat the fuck out of this other guy that wasn't us with like rocks while we hid in the bushes.
[00:11:14]  And that seemed to be like a pretty violent, scary situation.
[00:11:17]  It was a rush night or whatever.
[00:11:21]  Whereas this was very subdued.
[00:11:23]  Everyone was very nice.
[00:11:24]  It was chill.
[00:11:25]  No one like came up and questioned me or anything like that.
[00:11:27]  Everyone was very freely speaking with me.
[00:11:31]  And it was, I would say, like, I hate to say it.
[00:11:34]  It was pretty good, good vibes.
[00:11:36]  Good vibes at the Occupy.
[00:11:39]  And I kept wondering, like, okay, say I'm the most sensitive individual in the continental United States.
[00:11:44]  Which to many, you are.
[00:11:47]  Well, I am.
[00:11:47]  I'm just a little small being.
[00:11:50]  And I'm standing there, and I'm like, well, if I was inhabiting the role as the biggest pussy in America, like, what would scare me about this?
[00:11:58]  And I guess because they were like, I was like, I guess the closest thing I can guess is that there's some like visibly Muslim students.
[00:12:05]  Well, that would be racism, not sensitivity.
[00:12:07]  Gotcha.
[00:12:08]  Okay.
[00:12:08]  Yeah.
[00:12:08]  That would be a different level.
[00:12:10]  And I just could not understand how this would affect you in a major way, unless you were merely masking your vehement political disagreement with these people as fear for your own safety in order to get people who disagree with you politically expelled or suspended from school.
[00:12:28]  Yeah, well, that seems to be the case.
[00:12:30]  Let's back up a little bit and give our listeners who might be for some reason living under a rock, which if you do, I'm sure that's a great place to live.

=== Skunk Spray Incidents (11:34) ===

[00:12:40]  Say hi to the Salamanders.
[00:12:43]  But let's back up and give some context.
[00:12:45]  So I think it was last week, as we're recording this, last week, but I have no idea when you're listening to this, so just keep that in mind.
[00:12:52]  But a week ago, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, aka Columbia SJP, you're going to hear SJP a lot in this episode, they tweeted that they were occupying the center of campus, the place that you went to, Brace.
[00:13:05]  And they included a photo of their tents with a sign that said Liberated Zone.
[00:13:09]  You know, they have like camping tents out, Liberated Zone, big sign.
[00:13:12]  Side by side or below a photo from the 1968 Columbia University student occupation.
[00:13:18]  It's quite famous.
[00:13:21]  At that very same time, Columbia University president Namat Shafiq was testifying in front of Congress about how the university was handling alleged supposed anti-Semitism on campus.
[00:13:36]  We talked about before these congressional hearings a while back.
[00:13:39]  And I guess that like, I don't know, there was another one.
[00:13:42]  The video of this.
[00:13:44]  You watched it.
[00:13:44]  I did.
[00:13:45]  I finally watched clips of it at Brace's urging.
[00:13:49]  It was, I mean, it was completely absurd.
[00:13:53]  It is one of the like, listen, I've never been called to testify before Congress, but like the amount of fingers crossed that I do, I would fucking knock it out of the park.
[00:14:04]  I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:14:05]  That's what I would say.
[00:14:06]  I don't know.
[00:14:06]  What do you mean?
[00:14:07]  Could you repeat that?
[00:14:08]  Because I would just do that over and over and over and over.
[00:14:11]  Sorry, could you repeat that?
[00:14:12]  Could you repeat that?
[00:14:12]  Sorry, I didn't hear you.
[00:14:13]  My shit's all fucked up.
[00:14:15]  But they just like let people yell at them and then agree with them when they're like insulting them.
[00:14:20]  Well, they're a bunch of cowards.
[00:14:22]  Yeah.
[00:14:22]  And apparatchiks.
[00:14:24]  Absolutely.
[00:14:25]  That was on full display.
[00:14:27]  I mean, Columbia had already suspended two student groups, the Students for Justice in Palestine and then Jewish Voices for Peace.
[00:14:35]  And both of those groups are part of the organizing of these protests that are going on across campuses.
[00:14:40]  So the next day, after both the camp goes up and the testimony in Congress, where, I mean, you guys can watch it.
[00:14:49]  Columbia president, not surprising, just gets her ass fucking beat.
[00:14:52]  Baroness Shafiq.
[00:14:54]  Yes.
[00:14:54]  She's a baroness.
[00:14:55]  Is she really?
[00:14:56]  Yeah.
[00:14:56]  She is an Egyptian-British baroness.
[00:14:59]  Yeah.
[00:15:00]  Former, I believe, was also former IMF and World Bank.
[00:15:05]  You are correct, which was mentioned to me several times by people yesterday.
[00:15:08]  Yeah, well, so she's very familiar with, let's say, United States policy in those roles.
[00:15:15]  So the very next day, after she gets her fucking ass handed to her by Congress in a humiliating fashion, she calls the NYPD.
[00:15:25]  And the NYPD comes, sweeps the protests, arrests over 100 students, including Ilhan Omar's daughter.
[00:15:33]  And this is what she had to say.
[00:15:35]  I regret, I regret, that all of these attempts to resolve the situation were rejected by the students involved.
[00:15:41]  As a result, NYPD officers are now on campus and the process of clearing the encampment is underway.
[00:15:48]  Now, this obviously inviting the NYPD, the friendly neighborhood NYPD, famously, to campus to arrest students was not taken kindly by, I would say, faculty, students, even some administrators, shockingly.
[00:16:08]  And not just at Columbia, pretty much everywhere.
[00:16:11]  More and more and more solidarity protests started popping up.
[00:16:15]  There was at NYU, like over 1,000 students walked out of class.
[00:16:21]  They had set up their own sort of demonstration.
[00:16:24]  NYPD was quick to clear that.
[00:16:26]  Arrested a lot of professors, too, right?
[00:16:28]  Yeah, arrested a lot of professors.
[00:16:31]  And the NYPD was quoted as saying that they were so aggressive with arrests because there were, quote, professional agitators at these protests, which is another something we're going to hear kind of repeated out throughout the week.
[00:16:47]  Pretty crazy.
[00:16:51]  Only, like, only more and more universities have popped up.
[00:16:55]  As of now, UC Berkeley, New School, Emerson, USC, MIT, Tufts, Georgetown, Yale, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Brown, University of Pittsburgh, University of Rochester, Princeton, Cornell, Penn University, UT Austin.
[00:17:11]  There was also videos from, I think it was Iowa University or was it Indiana University?
[00:17:17]  I don't think it was two states.
[00:17:18]  I don't know which.
[00:17:19]  Where there were snipers on the ground.
[00:17:21]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:21]  I think it was Iowa.
[00:17:23]  So literally, you know, snipers with guns pointing at students.
[00:17:28]  I mean, it's pretty, pretty shocking, even for, you know, I don't consider myself that shocked by police activity.
[00:17:37]  And yet, this, I mean, this was pretty, it's pretty shocking to see.
[00:17:42]  Yeah, I mean, there's been a few like fairly, I guess you could say viral videos that have come out of that.
[00:17:47]  One of a very kind of an older woman at Emory, a professor, being arrested.
[00:17:52]  She's the head of philosophy department.
[00:17:53]  Yeah.
[00:17:54]  But she looks exactly what, if you haven't seen the video, she looks like the head of a philosophy department.
[00:17:59]  She's got like baggy silk pants on and like long flowy gray hair.
[00:18:03]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:18:05]  There's like, I feel like this is out of a crescent moon on University of Texas, too, like a protester that was being arrested, just being tased while he was like being restrained around.
[00:18:16]  Who was a medic?
[00:18:18]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:19]  I mean, just like multiple, like very shocking videos of extreme violence being meted out by police forces against protesters on campuses.
[00:18:32]  That really aren't doing much.
[00:18:34]  Yeah, amidst all of this has been like a hysteria.
[00:18:38]  And I kind of don't want to call it a hysteria because I think it's pretty cynical.
[00:18:41]  I think there are some people who genuinely buy in and like are hysterical.
[00:18:46]  And then I think there's a lot, and I mean a lot of very cynical actors who just see a political advantage that they're pressing.
[00:18:52]  But there has been in the news basically nonstop coverage of, quote, rampant anti-Semitism, I'm not quoting anyone, but I'm kind of quoting everyone at the same time, rampant anti-Semitism on universities that is framed in a way where it is a violent threat to Jewish students.
[00:19:10]  Yeah.
[00:19:11]  It's pretty difficult, if not impossible, to find violent incidents that are sort of being vaguely talked about.
[00:19:20]  On Columbia's campus in particular, you know, I was really curious because I hadn't heard about any like beatings or punchings or any sort of like violent incidents towards Jewish students on campus, but I was like, well, maybe I miss them.
[00:19:39]  You know, I've never been there.
[00:19:40]  I'll talk to quite a few people.
[00:19:41]  I did a lot of research outside of that as well, and I couldn't find any incidents of that.
[00:19:46]  The closest I could find to a truly like a violent incident was back in January.
[00:19:53]  There was a march protesting the war in Gaza where a lot of students were and protesters or student protesters were sort of marching around the quad and two ex-IDF soldiers who are at the GSC or whatever college there sprayed them with skunk spray, which is a like a non-lethal chemical weapon that was developed in Israel.
[00:20:18]  Yeah.
[00:20:19]  I mean, I do want to say really quick about that.
[00:20:22]  Developed in Israel, used on the Gazan population.
[00:20:26]  Yeah.
[00:20:26]  And then Israel has also attempted to sell it and export it to police in the U.S.
[00:20:34]  And I believe many of the forces have declined to buy it because of how awful it is.
[00:20:39]  It's like, it smells, I mean, I don't know how else to say it.
[00:20:42]  It smells like animal poop.
[00:20:44]  Yeah.
[00:20:44]  And it's like for like dispersing crowds.
[00:20:47]  It gets on you.
[00:20:49]  It's kind of like a smelly tear gas.
[00:20:51]  Yeah, it really is.
[00:20:53]  Funnily enough, actually, it was used yesterday to disperse anti-Netanyahu protesters in Israel.
[00:21:00]  But when they disperse it, I was talking to one of the women who was hit by this in Columbia.
[00:21:06]  Yeah, Columbia.
[00:21:07]  She had lived in Palestine for five years.
[00:21:09]  She was like a grad student or something.
[00:21:11]  She was a little older than the undergrads there.
[00:21:13]  She'd lived in Palestine for like five years.
[00:21:15]  She said she'd seen it used multiple times, but it's usually used from a hose on top of an armored vehicle.
[00:21:21]  So it's dispersed in that sort of similar.
[00:21:26]  So it's a little lighter.
[00:21:27]  This is like a concentrated spray from like a canister.
[00:21:30]  That she was hit with.
[00:21:31]  That she was hit with.
[00:21:33]  On the campus of Columbia.
[00:21:34]  Yeah.
[00:21:34]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:21:36]  By two of the, I guess, over 200 ex-IDF soldiers that attend the GSC there or the GS.
[00:21:45]  So a few days later, she said that that night she's like, wow, I fucking stink.
[00:21:48]  Like, you know, this sucks.
[00:21:50]  She threw their clothes away.
[00:21:51]  Some kids did not, or some adults did not.
[00:21:55]  But she's like, yeah, about 18 people were hit.
[00:21:58]  She threw her clothes away.
[00:22:00]  But a few days later, and this is this, you know, I spoke to this woman at length.
[00:22:04]  This is, I have a pretty good eye for a nervous ninny.
[00:22:07]  This was not a nervous ninety.
[00:22:08]  A nervous ninny?
[00:22:09]  You know, somebody of maybe like a fragile disposition.
[00:22:15]  Yeah.
[00:22:15]  Orientation.
[00:22:16]  Orientation.
[00:22:18]  You know, this lady was.
[00:22:20]  Strong as hell.
[00:22:20]  Yeah.
[00:22:21]  I mean, she was totally not somebody I thought was being histrionic or anything like that at all.
[00:22:26]  But she laid this out very matter of factor.
[00:22:28]  Matter of fact.
[00:22:29]  You know, a few days later, she had heart palpitations, went to CU Health.
[00:22:33]  They did it, gave it an EKG, but they didn't have the equipment to treat her, so they walked her to Mount Sinai.
[00:22:38]  There, she realizes that three other people, one of which she knew about, but then there was two others that she didn't know about, had been hospitalized after being sprayed with the skunk spray.
[00:22:49]  They did like an EKG chest x-ray.
[00:22:52]  They gave her a nebulizer, sent her home after 10 hours.
[00:22:55]  She wakes up a few days, shortly after, like maybe a couple days later, extremely sick, throws up for like hours and hours and hours, inflammation in the chest, and overall, about 12 people hospitalized.
[00:23:11]  She also said that her and multiple other of the women that were hit have had vaginal bleeding consistently for several months, which seems pretty concerning.
[00:23:27]  That student, along with four others, had actually been suspended earlier in April, or had not had, not prior to the skunk spray incident.
[00:23:36]  But she's suspended in April.
[00:23:39]  Now, the two people who did the skunk spray incident, which is, as far as I can find, like the most violent incident that has happened on Columbia's campus, there's reports that some pro-Israel students punched some people wearing kefias like four or five days ago at some gala.
[00:23:59]  But the skunk spray thing is certainly like the most videotaped and confirmed by all these different documents and all this kind of stuff.
[00:24:08]  Those two students who did it were suspended for three semesters, which is a while, I think in terms of college.

=== Columbia's Political Project (15:36) ===

[00:24:15]  I don't know how many semesters are.
[00:24:16]  There's like three in a year, two in a year, four in a year, I don't know.
[00:24:20]  But they're suspended for a while.
[00:24:22]  This has not really been publicized whatsoever.
[00:24:24]  I don't think that I actually don't know if that's been publicized at all.
[00:24:27]  The student I was talking to was suspended before the encampment started, before this mass wave of suspension started.
[00:24:34]  Early April after Palestine Solidarity Month, the school had hired private investigators to ask to interrogate her and several other people about the contents of political speeches that had happened at rallies.
[00:24:48]  She refused to meet with the investigators and was suspended, which I guess violates Columbia's own rules for in-semester suspension.
[00:24:59]  You know, the charges against them that they're a danger to the community.
[00:25:03]  So following you're describing the sweep that happened, and famously 53 students were suspended.
[00:25:13]  You know, this is pretty big.
[00:25:15]  1.6% of Barnard, which is like the liberal arts college attached to Columbia.
[00:25:19]  The women's liberal arts college.
[00:25:22]  Is it girls only?
[00:25:23]  Yeah.
[00:25:24]  co-eds.
[00:25:25]  Well, they have all been, I have all been, 1.6% of the student body has been suspended as of now.
[00:25:30]  I'm sure that will increase.
[00:25:33]  You know, it's a pretty shocking response of the administration.
[00:25:41]  You know, Baroness Shafiq, when she was in front of Congress, I can't take it seriously when you say Baroness.
[00:25:46]  Well, she's a Baroness.
[00:25:47]  It's so absurd.
[00:25:48]  I know her from Brussels.
[00:25:51]  You know, you saw that footage of Stefanik just like laying into them.
[00:25:59]  And they are just completely being like, yes, ma'am.
[00:26:02]  Yes, like, yes, I'm not.
[00:26:03]  No, it's absolute coward.
[00:26:04]  I mean, it's, you know, politics aside, right?
[00:26:08]  It is a bit shocking, though not surprising, to see the president of a university sort of like not even attempt to protect their students or shield them from such obvious like slander.
[00:26:26]  Yeah, not even a just like, you know, my students are practicing their constitutional right, blah, dah, dah, dah, dah, or my students are in line with what the UN has said.
[00:26:36]  And they're, you know, like there is not even an attempt there, just completely laying down and yes, totally, uh-huh, 100%.
[00:26:47]  You're right.
[00:26:47]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:26:48]  And, you know, one of the people that Stefanik keeps mentioning is a guy, a visiting professor named Muhammad Abduh.
[00:26:59]  And she's like, is Muhammad Abduh out yet?
[00:27:01]  Is Muhammad?
[00:27:02]  He says he's on the website here.
[00:27:03]  Is Muhammad Abdu out yet?
[00:27:04]  And I guess they're firing this visiting professor because this psychotic congresswoman, who is, by the way, like a big Bush, like, I think she worked in the Bush admin.
[00:27:16]  They're firing her because they're firing him because she requested it.
[00:27:19]  It's so strange to me.
[00:27:21]  One has to assume that like Baroness Shafiq agrees with this, right?
[00:27:26]  And like would rather take the side of the people interrogating her in this really degrading way on fucking television in the halls of Congress than defend her own students and employees.
[00:27:40]  Well, I think she just knows who she works for, which is not the students, which is not the university, but the people who run the university, which are the fucking donors.
[00:27:47]  Yes.
[00:27:49]  Yeah.
[00:27:49]  And that is, so one of the demands that the Columbia students have is Columbia has, I think a lot of these like kind of nice fancy schools have this.
[00:27:58]  They have like a like campus in Tel Aviv.
[00:28:02]  And like, I mean, by like a lot of schools have this, I mean, like they have like these international campuses.
[00:28:06]  I don't know what the deal with that is.
[00:28:08]  I don't know what Columbia Tel Aviv looks like.
[00:28:11]  But these students are demanding that that campus is closed.
[00:28:17]  However, Columbia, Columbia famously has had some, let's say, problems integrating into the neighborhood around the neighborhoods around it in the Big 68 protests.
[00:28:26]  Part of that was like kind of an anti-war thing, but also a large part of that was the fact that Columbia is a very wealthy school in what I believe at the time was right next to a very, I mean, it still is kind of, next to a very poor black neighborhoods.
[00:28:40]  Yeah, it was trying to expand into Morningside Park.
[00:28:43]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:44]  And so it's expanding north now.
[00:28:47]  And I can't remember the guy's name, and I should have fucking written it down, but this is told to me by several people.
[00:28:51]  I did look this up.
[00:28:53]  The guy who's basically paying for a good deal of expansion northwards that Columbia is doing predicated that donation on the Tel Aviv campus being built.
[00:29:05]  Yeah, I'm not surprising.
[00:29:06]  So this is who she's answering to.
[00:29:08]  And not just that guy, I mean plenty of others.
[00:29:10]  Robert Kraft.
[00:29:12]  Yeah.
[00:29:12]  Well, he's pulled all of his money, actually, funny enough.
[00:29:17]  But yeah, I mean, central to a lot of the demands, not just at Columbia, but across at other universities, is for the universities themselves to divest from companies that fund Israeli military operations.
[00:29:30]  Yes.
[00:29:30]  And this is part of, you know, or in line with the BDS movement, but also very much in line with the tradition of other protests.
[00:29:38]  I mean, you mentioned the 68 Columbia protests, but there was also a really big protest in 85 at Columbia protesting South African apartheid.
[00:29:49]  And their big demand was that the university divest from investing in companies like, I don't know who it was, like Ford Motors, General Motors, Coca-Cola, businesses that had huge footprints in South Africa as a way of protesting the apartheid regime.
[00:30:11]  And they won those demands after, I can't remember how long the occupation and the protests lasted on campuses, though I do know that Columbia was one of the last schools to cede to student demands on that one.
[00:30:27]  It's funny, I was talking to some students there yesterday, and they were like, yeah, Columbia sort of like prides itself.
[00:30:34]  Because I was asking if Columbia advertises the 68 protests, like the history of protests at the school.
[00:30:38]  Because I know that SF State talks about the third world liberation movement that was started the ethics studies stuff, blah, blah, blah.
[00:30:48]  They sort of like, they use that.
[00:30:49]  Free speech movement at Berkeley.
[00:30:51]  Exactly.
[00:30:51]  And so sort of like a, I don't know, like a left washing of university.
[00:30:57]  And they said, yeah, and that the Columbia will pride itself on being the first of the Ivies to divest from apartheid South Africa.
[00:31:04]  By the way, in 1985, however, it's the first of the Ivies because dozens of school of other non-Ivy League colleges had already divested from South Africa and they were in fact very late, the administration was very late to respond to protesters' demands that this happen.
[00:31:22]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:31:24]  So, I mean, when we are talking about this money that they're divesting from, I want to kind of explain this a little bit because it is sort of confusing where it's like, wait, what do you mean schools have endowments that make investments and how does that all work?
[00:31:38]  Yeah.
[00:31:40]  You know, because I think it is important for kind of understanding, you know, kind of how we got here and some of the, I don't know, some of the stuff that some of the students are pushing up against, even if they may not realize it.
[00:31:54]  I mean, for right now, to say that, you know, most universities, especially the private, very wealthy Ivy League universities, they rely on endowments for funding research and scholarships, right?
[00:32:06]  Now, endowments are just basically funds.
[00:32:08]  They get invested.
[00:32:09]  Private equity, hedge funds kind of manage them, whatever.
[00:32:12]  For a lot of these universities, that includes investing in companies like Google, Amazon, both of whom famously have $1.5 billion cloud computing contracts with the Israeli government.
[00:32:27]  But there's also the big classics.
[00:32:29]  You know them, you love them, Lockheed Martin.
[00:32:31]  Love them.
[00:32:33]  They just, yeah, we should say, Lockheed Martin, by the way, beating quarterly expectations, they're doing so fucking great, which would make sense because about a month ago, we just authorized billions of dollars worth of bombs and fighter jets, including 25 F-35s, to Israel, by the way.
[00:32:58]  So when students are asking the universities to divest, what they're saying is we don't want you investing in, investing the endowment in funds that also invest in these companies.
[00:33:10]  And like I said, that kind of like takes a page from the South African strategy.
[00:33:14]  So most universities depend on these investments for income.
[00:33:21]  Like I said, almost all the endowments, they're all run by professionals, very much like retirement funds or pensions.
[00:33:28]  They're run by big investment offices and so on.
[00:33:30]  But I think that like I want to, you know, it hasn't always been this way.
[00:33:36]  And I think that there is, you know, asking kind of how we got here is one, a big question with like an even longer answer.
[00:33:47]  But I do kind of want to try and answer that a little bit because I do think some of this history about universities and political activism and privatization and running a university like a corporation all can help us understand exactly what's going on and why the universities are reacting to these protesters in this way.
[00:34:08]  Yeah.
[00:34:10]  So my like most, I will say my most lib-tarted view, if I can say that.
[00:34:16]  I think you can.
[00:34:17]  As this mic is maybe drooping a little bit, got a droopy mic here.
[00:34:22]  I will 100% wave the lib-tarted flag on this and I'm more than happy to be on an island.
[00:34:28]  But mass public higher education is like one of the single greatest achievements of America in the 20th century.
[00:34:38]  And that comes with a lot of caveats, of course.
[00:34:41]  But particularly in the post-war period, along with the GI Bill, which expanded access to people who were previously excluded from a lot of institutions, obviously that includes minorities, that includes women, but also basically all the working class.
[00:34:58]  College was like fucking basically free for the first time anywhere, right?
[00:35:05]  Really didn't have any contemporary equivalent.
[00:35:10]  And it was a huge, it's a huge achievement.
[00:35:14]  You know, I think that for us coming from California, like the easy, the easy kind of thing to point to is the UCs.
[00:35:20]  And talking about some changes that have happened there can help us to understand some changes that happened everywhere.
[00:35:28]  You know, this huge network of public universities that were basically largely free up into the 1970s.
[00:35:35]  And it meant that kids going to those universities had certain kinds of intellectual freedom, right?
[00:35:41]  Political freedom, creative freedom to explore, to pursue intellectual projects.
[00:35:47]  Research in particular was independent, but there's also a lot of activism on campus.
[00:35:52]  We just, you know, we just talked to Klaus Marx about all of this.
[00:35:56]  There's no way to separate what was happening on campuses, you know, in the mid-60s through 68 and elsewhere without talking about the freedom that kids had from paying for school.
[00:36:13]  I mean, it just, you know, it wasn't there.
[00:36:15]  And there's no way to then separate out the political contributions that those people made that were attending those schools from that freedom, from that intellectual and creative freedom that was afforded those kids on those campuses.
[00:36:27]  So the question then is like, what changed?
[00:36:29]  And there's a confluence of political forces that kind of fused in reaction to all of that it's worth talking about.
[00:36:38]  You know, we mentioned on the show last time, we were talking about how the new right in the wake of the Goldwater defeat in 1964 was like trying to reorganize.
[00:36:52]  And one of, you know, one of the big successes was Ronald Reagan, governor, 66 in California.
[00:37:01]  That's right.
[00:37:01]  That's right, baby.
[00:37:03]  And he kind of became a model for the face of the new right.
[00:37:05]  Obviously, you know where that story ends.
[00:37:08]  Tarot cards, mysticism, with a fucking face in a motherfucking ditch.
[00:37:14]  Yeah, my God.
[00:37:15]  Shit in his motherfucking pants.
[00:37:19]  So part of the political project of the new right, and this includes specifically the neoliberal schools coming out of Virginia, was, and we've talked about this on the show before, but it was like to institute a revolution in higher education because they saw what was happening on the campuses as a real political threat.
[00:37:38]  And it was in a lot of ways.
[00:37:40]  It was.
[00:37:42]  What they wanted to do was revolutionize the way that everyone looked at education.
[00:37:47]  It was no longer, higher education wasn't a benefit to the public.
[00:37:51]  It wasn't, you know, the idea is how do we make public education a private good, right?
[00:37:58]  How do we take this public good and make it a private good?
[00:38:02]  How do we start to see students as customers and schools as businesses?
[00:38:08]  And you see this with Reagan, right?
[00:38:10]  I mean, there was literally in response to the free speech movement in Berkeley, he famously said he was like, okay, states shouldn't subsidize intellectual curiosity.
[00:38:20]  Okay.
[00:38:20]  And so they stopped.
[00:38:22]  Yeah.
[00:38:24]  You know, this was the kind of ideological backbone for the student loan program.
[00:38:29]  This is when they said, okay, how do we responsibilize students?
[00:38:33]  How do we individualize risk?
[00:38:35]  How do we make it really difficult for you to say anything on campus that could get you in trouble?
[00:38:39]  Well, we make it so that you and your family have to take out a fucking loan against your house or against your future so that you, you know, you'll start to understand risk there.
[00:38:52]  Yeah.
[00:38:53]  Right.
[00:38:53]  You're going to be indebted to it.
[00:38:54]  And this is something you've been paying off for maybe, I mean, a lot of people I know, decades.
[00:38:59]  Yes.
[00:38:59]  And so when you individualize that risk, they were able to do that and then reap the political rewards from kids who no longer enjoy intellectual and economic freedom that the higher ed was providing, right?
[00:39:11]  Now for the UCs, what that meant was that now a formerly entirely free system of higher education, you know, now it's, I think the state only subsidizes like 12%.
[00:39:21]  Oh, wow.
[00:39:22]  The rest comes from tuition and then private donors who we'll get to.
[00:39:26]  We know a lot of this story, right?
[00:39:27]  Okay.
[00:39:28]  But it made political action very, very risky, right?
[00:39:31]  You, your family, you have money on the line.
[00:39:33]  You're going to shut the fuck up.
[00:39:35]  Well, that's the thing is if you have this huge financial investment in your education, why risk that by like occupying a building or something?
[00:39:43]  Absolutely.
[00:39:44]  And I just want to be clear, like, you know, there's a lot of scholarship on this.
[00:39:48]  This was like a specific and like explicit political project.

=== Shift in Higher Education Funding (05:06) ===

[00:39:51]  Interesting.
[00:39:52]  Yeah, I mean, I didn't know that UCs used to be free.
[00:39:55]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, completely.
[00:39:58]  I think even in like the early 70s, it was only as this stuff was going, as they were starting to strip it away, they would be like, tuition would be like $600 for a year.
[00:40:07]  I mean, I know that, like, isn't it if you go to like community college at CCSF for two years?
[00:40:11]  No, you can just get into a UC.
[00:40:13]  It's not free, never mind.
[00:40:15]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:16]  I mean, and in-state tuition is much, much cheaper.
[00:40:19]  Yeah, but it's still, I think it's like $14,000 a year or something.
[00:40:23]  Yeah, yeah, that's a lot.
[00:40:24]  So it's not cheap in any way.
[00:40:28]  But so there's also knockoff effects from this that were also kind of part of this revolution that we can talk about, which is it changed also the shape of universities, right?
[00:40:39]  If education is viewed this way, if the cost of education is viewed this way as an investment, then what you get out of it is then viewed as your return on investment.
[00:40:52]  Right?
[00:40:52]  And so, you know, I think that it's, this is obvious now, but it wasn't at the time.
[00:40:57]  Like very few students, working class, poor, even middle class students can like look at college education and you don't think of it as expanding your intellectual capacities as a human being, as a citizen, as a political actor.
[00:41:13]  Instead, you look at it as, okay, what am I putting in?
[00:41:17]  And then what am I getting out?
[00:41:18]  And how does this relate to my future earning potential?
[00:41:21]  Yeah, I mean, that's sort of how I've always, I mean, I have a sort of weird, I went to a high school that wasn't like, a lot of kids from there didn't go to college afterwards or whatever.
[00:41:30]  It was kind of like an alternative school.
[00:41:33]  But so the way I always viewed college was like, okay, this is something you go to because like you just need a college degree in order to get most jobs that were previously entry-level jobs.
[00:41:43]  And because I was able to get entry-level jobs by just saying that I had a college degree on my resume, because they don't call SF state in check, I just did that.
[00:41:52]  I mean, yeah, then that probably, I'm sure that worked.
[00:41:54]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:55]  So if you're looking, listen, if you're looking to save a bunch of money, you can just do that.
[00:41:59]  But I mean, this was a shift in how we understood the purpose of education.
[00:42:04]  This is an ideological shift that is downstream from all of these economic changes, right?
[00:42:12]  You know, that in turn has a massive impact on the nature of education itself, right?
[00:42:19]  Instead of offering courses that were, you know, about expanding the mind, exploring ideas, trying to increase the capacity of oneself as a citizen, as a political agent of change, as understanding things that might not have clear returns on investment like literature or history or understanding other cultures or whatever, you have demands, you know,
[00:42:49]  from students and families that are paying for this shit and then the administration that is there to kind of manage their expectations to basically provide only a vocational education.
[00:43:00]  Yeah.
[00:43:01]  So then you see all the universities shifting into STEM, other technical educations, particularly computer science and engineering.
[00:43:08]  We all know this story.
[00:43:10]  But even in the humanities and the social studies, what gets funded then are only things that can be, you know, increase students who are paying for this good, increase their potential, their earning potential, by increasing their perceived value as a piece of human capital in the marketplace.
[00:43:32]  And so completely, this was a completely different, I mean, I know it sounds crazy because we live in it, but it didn't used to be this way.
[00:43:41]  It just didn't used to be this way.
[00:43:44]  And everything, every decision that a university makes, from the administration to the classes to the faculty to the students that are chosen, has to then be justified in terms of how these customers can increase their potential earning capacity.
[00:44:04]  Right?
[00:44:04]  And so you see that.
[00:44:05]  I mean, again, there's so much is written on this about the assaults on departments that don't produce those kinds of returns in the humanities.
[00:44:16]  You see it like there's a new thing every week that's like, oh, this university just decided not to have a history department.
[00:44:22]  Oh, this university isn't going to have a language department.
[00:44:25]  Things like that, right?
[00:44:26]  Well, I mean, it's also sort of the joke on the right, like, oh, what did you major in gender studies?
[00:44:33]  Well, yeah, of course.
[00:44:34]  I mean, that's all downstream from these decisions.
[00:44:37]  And I mean, it's not just the right.
[00:44:38]  I mean, Obama had the very famous line that, you know, he gives a fucking speech in, it was in like Wisconsin, some shit.
[00:44:46]  I remember this, where he was like, you know, I'm not going to do Obama voice, but he was like, you know, he's like, well, you know, you can earn a lot more as a plumber than you can as an art history major.

=== Obama's Famous Speech (12:59) ===

[00:44:58]  But how come you become a plumber than Obama?
[00:45:01]  I mean, it just, you know, it's a very, there's a very long history here that is, you know, across parties.
[00:45:08]  But there's the other thing that happened alongside these two things that is really important for understanding the kind of endowments and the kind of financial infrastructure of these institutions.
[00:45:23]  And that's kind of, you know, it goes alongside the shift away from the state funding higher education.
[00:45:30]  Right.
[00:45:32]  So it's during this time that endowments, the endowments, the private donor funds that make up, you know, both the public and the private universities' largesse, it's during this time they get super, super big or get on the path to becoming super, super big, as big as we know them now.
[00:45:49]  How?
[00:45:50]  Well, one of the things is that a lot of Wall Street guys who now could bet on all of these junk bonds and create all of these exotic crazy derivatives, they were now freed up to do so.
[00:46:03]  They went to a lot of those universities and they had a lot of alumni connections with university administrators and board members looking to make returns on their endowments.
[00:46:14]  And so literally you had guys, like boys, basically being like, hey man, I'm Matthew Mathewson from class of 68 calling up, remember us?
[00:46:29]  We used to go hang out at the old eating club and beat up all those blacks and women and Jews.
[00:46:34]  Remember how we used to do that together?
[00:46:36]  I actually don't, Liz, but.
[00:46:38]  No, but they would call in favors and then suddenly they were put in charge managing the investment returns on these donor like donations to these universities and they did well with them because the market fucking took off now that they were able to make all of these newly unregulated insane bets, right?
[00:47:01]  And so as the kind of shared wealth grew between the financiers and these fucking universities when they're endowments, more and more financiers took positions on the boards of universities in order to manage the flow of funds and make sure that all of their investments were being protected, right?
[00:47:23]  And we know, thanks to our podcast, how important those relationships are.
[00:47:29]  I'm thinking of Leon Black.
[00:47:30]  I'm thinking of Jeffrey Epstein, right?
[00:47:33]  All of people who had ties or were on boards of several universities, making sure that those endowments and their investments were put in places that they wanted them to be, whether that was in Epstein's weird sex ranch ideas or whether that is about fucking Zionist projects, right?
[00:47:56]  Or whether it's just about crazy derivatives.
[00:47:59]  That's what these guys are on these boards to make sure of, right?
[00:48:03]  And they all make a shit ton of money this way.
[00:48:06]  So I think that like there's kind of these like three ideological strands that I just want to like, you know, kind of circle back, right?
[00:48:15]  Think of them as kind of like tributaries, you know?
[00:48:18]  Like you've got this political project of responsibilizing students as a way to curb intellectual activity on the campuses and stop all this kind of like nascent left-wing, you know, like political activity that's happening in the campuses.
[00:48:36]  You have then the economic impact of reducing or like stripping higher education down into return on investment bones.
[00:48:46]  And then you have universities shifting from institutes of higher learning to basically corporate legal fictions meant to create and protect assets and secure investment returns overseen by a select group of financiers.
[00:49:00]  And if you think of those as like tributaries that flow into what's basically like a river of nihilism that contours the American university system today.
[00:49:11]  And you see it on display in every aspect of these protests from the administration's response to these kids to these fucking administrators in front of Congress to the expectations that they have on, you know, from their donors to their fucking calling the NYPD immediately when something gets just slightly out of hand.
[00:49:34]  Yeah.
[00:49:35]  And now threatening to call in the National Guard.
[00:49:38]  I mean, it's fucking crazy.
[00:49:53]  Did you see that there was like some people commenting about the divestment strategy that they're like, well, you know, these funds, they're managed.
[00:50:01]  Like, really just be taking out like 0.1% of something and buttered.
[00:50:06]  That's not really going to take a chunk into it.
[00:50:08]  I don't know what people are thinking.
[00:50:10]  And there's like all those kind of like smart, I don't know, economists and centrists and Vox commenters or what I always assume they work at Vox.
[00:50:18]  And usually they do.
[00:50:19]  It's like actually a weird bet.
[00:50:21]  Like if you just click on them, then you see like Vox and Bio and you're like, God damn, I'm going to start responding to that Vox and bio.
[00:50:29]  That's been popular.
[00:50:30]  I've seen a lot.
[00:50:32]  Don't they know that even if they succeed, then these protests are pointless?
[00:50:36]  Yeah, totally.
[00:50:36]  Well, if they're pointless, then why does it cause this response?
[00:50:39]  Well, I think that that's true.
[00:50:40]  And I do think that like it's, you know, that's exactly the same thing that people said about anti-apartheid protests.
[00:50:46]  Absolutely.
[00:50:47]  Well, the big thing there, too, was also the argument was like, actually, this hurts like black people who have jobs in American companies there, which is funny because that echoes precisely the same arguments against BDS that were used.
[00:51:03]  Because a lot of the BDS stuff, you know, it talks about companies that have big investments in Israel, but it also talks about companies that like, like SodaStream, for instance, had like factories in occupied territories.
[00:51:13]  The argument against that from sort of like the liberal side was that, oh, we actually shouldn't, we shouldn't encourage boycotts of this because this actually gives jobs to Palestinians in economically depressed areas.
[00:51:25]  I mean, this is the fact of the matter is, is this.
[00:51:29]  The response to these protests has been so over the top and so insane from like these liberal universities because Palestine remains a complete red line, right?
[00:51:40]  Like a line that you just do not cross.
[00:51:43]  And like everything, you know, you can be the perfect liberal in every single way, woke, whatever.
[00:51:49]  But with regards to Palestine, that is just, it is a non-fucking starter.
[00:51:54]  And part of the reason you mentioned is the donors who have wielded extreme power at these schools.
[00:52:01]  But it's also because, frankly, a lot of the administrations at these schools probably agrees with the pro-Israel side.
[00:52:07]  Well, I think even if they don't have, even if they don't have strong feelings, which like, I don't know, I think a lot of them might see the news and might be like, which is like in line with where a lot of just like norm, like middle-class Americans, when you see this polling coming out, they're sort of like, not feeling great about the U.S. continued support of Israel in respect to the assault on Gaza.
[00:52:34]  And I think it also has to do with the, it's like a power thing.
[00:52:39]  It's like, we can't divest, not because it wouldn't, we would stop, you know, making money.
[00:52:45]  They can make money elsewhere, whatever, but because it would, they would have to admit that they're guilty.
[00:52:50]  Yeah.
[00:52:51]  They would have to admit that they're fucking guilty.
[00:52:53]  And these kids are right.
[00:52:55]  That all these people are right, that they have been fucking aiding and abetting a fucking genocide.
[00:53:00]  Well, I think one of the reasons, too, this has gotten so much attention is because there's been a lot, a lot of written about how the big divide now with Israel-Palestine is among young people, right?
[00:53:15]  And you can very much tell that the pro-Israel side is conscious of the fact and very sensitive to the fact that they're losing a lot of young people, a lot of sympathy from young people, if they ever had it in the first place, or they did have it, but they are losing this new generation of young people.
[00:53:33]  And I think that, you know, if we think back to the strategies to sort of distract from the war in Gaza and from the genocide there that have been employed in the U.S., really the only real effective one has been claims of anti-Semitism on campuses, right?
[00:53:49]  Like you had that sort of interrogation in Congress of the, you know, what it was like, Yale.
[00:53:55]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:53:56]  The one in Philadelphia, whatever that one is.
[00:53:58]  You know, they had this like shakeup among administrations because they were seen as soft on anti-Semitism.
[00:54:06]  That worked.
[00:54:07]  That was effective, right?
[00:54:08]  I mean, also it, you know, it dovetails with the sort of like the anti-DEI shit or whatever.
[00:54:13]  Yeah, totally.
[00:54:14]  Manhattan Institute types have been putting out there.
[00:54:16]  But like it is, it has been an effective strategy.
[00:54:18]  And it's very blindingly obvious that like the so-called like concern for Jewish students at Columbia is a complete smokescreen for political goals of pro-Israel media outlets, politicians, businesses, whatever, in order to use that as a cudgel to stamp out pro-Palestine, not even just protests themselves, but the opinion, to make it completely verbotim.
[00:54:45]  And they realize they can't do that.
[00:54:47]  And so now they just deploy the police.
[00:54:51]  You know, we had, I think we should just play now, it's about a two-minute speech that Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, a country which is currently at war, which is a country that is not just not just at war with the eight-year-olds of Gaza, but trying to start a war in southern Lebanon and doing its best to prod the Iranians into a more robust response.
[00:55:16]  He took time out of his busy day and also somebody who is facing, just reported today in the Times of Israel, worried about facing charges and an arrest from the ICC.
[00:55:28]  Not that that will ever happen, but that this is what they're meeting about.
[00:55:31]  He took time out of his busy fucking day to give this speech encouraging the National Guard to be sent into colleges to arrest, beat, or shoot American college students.
[00:55:41]  What's happening on America's college campuses is horrific.
[00:55:45]  Anti-Semitic mobs have taken over leading universities.
[00:55:48]  They call for the annihilation of Israel.
[00:55:51]  They attack Jewish students.
[00:55:52]  They attack Jewish faculty.
[00:55:55]  This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s.
[00:55:59]  It's unconscionable.
[00:56:01]  It has to be stopped.
[00:56:02]  It has to be condemned and condemned unequivocally.
[00:56:05]  But that's not what happened.
[00:56:07]  The response of several university presidents was shameful.
[00:56:11]  Now, fortunately, state, local, federal officials, many of them have responded differently, but there has to be more.
[00:56:18]  More has to be done.
[00:56:19]  It has to be done not only because they attack Israel, that's bad enough.
[00:56:23]  Not only because they want to kill Jews wherever they are, that's bad enough.
[00:56:27]  It's also, when you listen to them, it's also because they say not only death to Israel, death to the Jews, but death to America.
[00:56:36]  And this tells us that there is an anti-Semitic surge here that has terrible consequences.
[00:56:41]  We see this exponential rise of anti-Semitism throughout America and throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists, genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians.
[00:56:52]  Yet it is Israel that is falsely accused of genocide, Israel that is falsely accused of starvation and all sundry war crimes.
[00:57:00]  It's all one big libel.
[00:57:02]  But that's not new.
[00:57:03]  We've seen in history that anti-Semitic attacks were always preceded by vilification and slander, lies that were cast against the Jewish people that are unbelievable, yet people believed them.
[00:57:14]  And what is important now is for all of us, all of us who are interested and cherish our values and our civilization, to stand up together and to say, enough is enough.
[00:57:25]  We have to stop anti-Semitism because anti-Semitism is the canary in the coal mine.
[00:57:30]  It always precedes larger conflagrations that engulf the entire world.
[00:57:35]  So I ask all of you, Jews and non-Jews alike, who are concerned with our common future and our common values, to do one thing.
[00:57:42]  Stand up, speak up, be counted.
[00:57:45]  Stop anti-Semitism now.
[00:57:48]  There are American politicians that agree with that speech, agree with the speech of a foreign leader to send in the National Guard to arrest college students.

=== Stop Anti-Semitism Now (16:01) ===

[00:57:58]  Now, the National Guard, which I don't even know if it has arrest powers, there is a single instance that I think stands out with the National Guard and American college students.
[00:58:09]  And that's, of course, the murders at Kent State.
[00:58:11]  Yeah.
[00:58:12]  Right?
[00:58:12]  That is the one thing that comes to people's minds.
[00:58:14]  Now, you would wonder, what does the New York National Guard have that the NYPD lacks?
[00:58:21]  The NYPD is like the biggest, by far the biggest police force in America.
[00:58:25]  It is bigger than a lot of countries, a lot of mid-sized countries, fucking armies.
[00:58:29]  It is well equipped, has powers of arrest, has jails.
[00:58:33]  He doesn't have to like create these things like the National Guard would.
[00:58:36]  What makes people like professor, assistant professor of the business school, shy david eye, make these fucking speeches calling upon the National Guard to come to campus with fucking rifles and arrest these students.
[00:58:50]  Or former Governor Andrew Cuomo.
[00:58:52]  Yeah, it's because they want, they maybe want a couple of students to get smoked by the National Guard.
[00:58:56]  That's really the only thing that I can, the only thing that I can think of.
[00:58:59]  There is no other reason to call for that except to sort of make a, and I hate to use this Vox ass term, a motherfucking dog whistle back to Kent State stuff.
[00:59:10]  It is, it is, I think what offends me personally too is how cynical this stuff is.
[00:59:16]  Columbia is no stranger to that.
[00:59:19]  There is a, are you familiar with the woman named Barry Weiss?
[00:59:22]  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:59:23]  I met her at your birthday.
[00:59:24]  Yeah.
[00:59:25]  Oh, listen, that was an NDA type event.
[00:59:28]  And yes, I did have an Ayella style orgy featuring Barry Weiss at my birthday.
[00:59:32]  But not me.
[00:59:33]  Not Liz.
[00:59:34]  Liz was simply a videographer, let's say, of the event.
[00:59:37]  A pornographer, fine.
[00:59:39]  Anyways, Barry Weiss attended Columbia University in her intimidable style in the 2000s.
[00:59:47]  And in 2008, so Columbia, you know, Edward Saeed or whatever taught there.
[00:59:52]  Columbia has like a pretty big Middle Eastern studies department that is a controversial among the Weiss types.
[00:59:59]  But in 2008, Barry Weiss got together with a bunch of other Zionist students and tried to get three pro-Palestine professors fired.
[01:00:06]  I want to say real quick, I've told this story to multiple, I would say, anti-woke types that had no idea about Barry Weiss's background here.
[01:00:21]  They did not know this story.
[01:00:24]  And I would always bring it up when I would say, like, oh, it's so interesting how such a champion for so-called free speech herself got her start by fucking canceling a professor.
[01:00:37]  Nobody knows this story.
[01:00:38]  Somehow it's been scrubbed from her biography.
[01:00:42]  And I want to scrub it back in.
[01:00:44]  Yeah.
[01:00:44]  I mean, Barry Weiss, listen, we have said on the show before, I mean, point out hypocrisy can be fun, but like people just ignore it, right?
[01:00:51]  If you're like, you were hypocritical, people are like, no, I wasn't, and blah, Really, like, it's just, people just lie and twist their buttons.
[01:01:00]  Why be a hypocrite when you can gaslight?
[01:01:02]  Exactly.
[01:01:02]  Yeah.
[01:01:03]  But Barry Weiss, like, partnered with this pro-Israel organization called the David Project, which was started by the founders of Camera, which we talked about on the show before, which is like a pro-Israel or like a Zionist media watchdog group that's still around.
[01:01:22]  I mean, there's this whole ecosystem of these groups, which we talked about in our episode on the lobby.
[01:01:27]  Camera, which so the founders of Camera also started this thing called the David Project.
[01:01:33]  She partnered with the David Project on a short film called Columbia Unbecoming, which was like a bunch of like Zionist students sort of weeping on camera about how Professor Joseph Masad was Mossad, not Masad.
[01:01:48]  Joseph Masad, an Arab professor they didn't like, was mean to them, which is disputed by like dozens of other students who were present for this one instance, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[01:01:59]  They screened this film like to like, they did it like, you know, remember how they were going around and like screening like the like October 7th video to like, and being like, tell everyone how crazy this was.
[01:02:10]  They did the same thing with this.
[01:02:11]  They were like screening it for like the administrators or whatever, like wouldn't release.
[01:02:15]  I think it is on just YouTube now.
[01:02:18]  And she engaged in like a really intense campaign to get professors fired.
[01:02:24]  Yes.
[01:02:25]  Joseph Assad is still, I mean, he's brought up like almost a dozen times in the hearing the other day.
[01:02:30]  I think he still works at Columbia.
[01:02:32]  Funnily enough, on the board of Camera, which the founder co-founded the David Project, is Leo Kahn, who's the father of Joseph Kahn, who's the editor of the New York Times, where Barry Weiss worked and then quit and started the free press.
[01:02:47]  Here's the thing.
[01:02:48]  I think maybe people don't realize that Barry Weiss is a neocon because she's a lesbian.
[01:02:52]  I genuinely think that.
[01:02:54]  But like Barry Weiss is like a full unreconstructed like 80s neocon.
[01:03:00]  And it is just like also married to like the this like land baron from California.
[01:03:04]  Talk about a baroness.
[01:03:06]  Talk about a baroness.
[01:03:08]  Pistachios, no?
[01:03:09]  Yes, pistachios, which is a rough.
[01:03:12]  Friend of the show, Yasha Levine, actually has a pretty good documentary and a long form piece about that.
[01:03:18]  But I mean, it's just like, this is not like a new thing, right?
[01:03:22]  People talk about like the universe is awoke.
[01:03:26]  The fact of the matter is, is Palestine is always a red line when you get down to it.
[01:03:32]  It's funny because a number of people really were purged from news organizations in the aftermath of October 7th because they were pro-Palestinian.
[01:03:40]  And this has been a big take-up of the news.
[01:03:41]  Ourselves included.
[01:03:42]  Ourselves, we were fired from True and On Incorporated.
[01:03:45]  Of course, had to re-incorporate two Us, but that's neither here nor there.
[01:03:50]  But the fact of the matter is, is like you can basically say whatever you want about Palestinians and never have it affect your career prospects, never have it affect your collegiate prospects.
[01:04:03]  No one's going to put your fucking face on a website and try to hound you for the rest of your life.
[01:04:07]  You can say nuke every, nuke fucking Gaza, slaughter every fucking kid.
[01:04:12]  And many of them say this.
[01:04:13]  And people do say this kind of shit.
[01:04:15]  That does not fucking matter.
[01:04:16]  No, and that's another thing I want to, you know, I mean, there's a lot of bally who brought that one out.
[01:04:22]  Ballyhoo on the old Twitterverse and the you know the pages of the discourse or whatever about the kids wearing COVID masks as if they're being just like, oh, I need, oh, I'm such a snowflake.
[01:04:35]  I can't be outside with that COVID mask.
[01:04:37]  No, bitch.
[01:04:38]  You're fucking high.
[01:04:39]  Have you never been to a protest?
[01:04:40]  Have you never done anything like quasi politically dangerous in your life?
[01:04:44]  They're fucking protecting their face so they don't get ID'd and thrown up on a fucking Israeli paid for website that is somehow like an NGO through eight different corporations and funded by like five different ex-congressmen or whatever the fuck so they can never get hired again so they can get kicked out of school.
[01:05:02]  Like that's what happens to kids that protest Israel.
[01:05:08]  Yeah.
[01:05:08]  That's what happens on these, you know, that's what happens when you try to exercise actual free speech.
[01:05:14]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:05:14]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:05:15]  It's absolutely absurd.
[01:05:17]  You know, and they're talking about sending the fucking National Guard to fucking Columbia University.
[01:05:23]  And I cannot stress enough, like, I met a lot of really sweet young people on this fucking, at this encampment yesterday, including a True Non listener with a hickey on his neck.
[01:05:34]  Respect to that dude.
[01:05:35]  But also a question about the person who gave it.
[01:05:39]  I know.
[01:05:39]  What are you trying to do?
[01:05:40]  Make this guy.
[01:05:41]  They need a little lesson, maybe.
[01:05:43]  Maybe, maybe.
[01:05:44]  Well, listen, we don't go to college, Liz.
[01:05:46]  And this guy, let me tell you, he was fucking killing it at the beer pong in the Gaza encampment.
[01:05:51]  Just kidding, that did not exist, but the hickey did.
[01:05:54]  Unless maybe he got was injured, but I assume it looked very much like a hickey.
[01:05:57]  Anyways, spending too long on that.
[01:06:00]  Still kind of an injury, if you think about it.
[01:06:01]  Still kind of an injury.
[01:06:02]  A romantic injury.
[01:06:03]  I cannot stress enough how like this was.
[01:06:07]  Non-this was like this is.
[01:06:09]  I mean, you went.
[01:06:10]  You went to Princeton yeah, I was at the Princeton one and it was except for there were two students one PhD student, one master student who were arrested and kicked out of the school like expelled, I think.
[01:06:24]  They're facing suspension and they're not allowed to return.
[01:06:28]  They're kicked out of their housing.
[01:06:29]  They're not allowed to return to campus.
[01:06:31]  Yeah um, but aside from that, it was all good vibes.
[01:06:35]  It was just a bunch of people sitting around reading books, talking some speeches, some Mic Jack everyone knows Mic Jack um, you know pizza.
[01:06:47]  People having class outside saying we're having class here.
[01:06:50]  This is where school is here today until the school divests or they forcibly remove us, which shall be interesting to see how that goes.
[01:06:58]  You know, at one point, Chris Hedges showed up, which was cool, and he was speaking, and then there was a helicopter, a fucking helicopter, flying over Princeton University, which is so stupid.
[01:07:11]  And it was making so much noise that someone handed Chris Hedges like a little speaker so that he could, you know, people could hear him.
[01:07:20]  And that was a bridge too far.
[01:07:21]  Immediately, Chris Hedges forcibly removed from campus, banned from Princeton for 90 days.
[01:07:28]  Good God.
[01:07:29]  The Pulitzer Prize winning, I believe, journalist Chris Hedges, and also local, just completely, just absolutely absurd responses, but did not, I mean, I think what we saw happening at Emory was completely psychotic with faculty getting arrested, faculty trying to protect students from getting arrested, from Georgia state police using everything in their arsenal to stop, which is basically,
[01:07:57]  I'm sorry, I have to say, like an almost offensively peaceful encampment.
[01:08:03]  Yes, yeah, yeah.
[01:08:04]  I mean, that's the thing.
[01:08:05]  Like these, these are not like war encampments.
[01:08:08]  This doesn't like even resemble like occupying anything, really.
[01:08:11]  Absolutely not.
[01:08:12]  These are like fucking college kids having an encampment as a protest.
[01:08:16]  And even that is like a bridge too far.
[01:08:18]  Even that.
[01:08:20]  I asked a bunch of them, like, hey, how, like, you know, why, what was the choice to occupy the quad here and not like a building, you know, famously as happened in 1968?
[01:08:30]  Like, because we want people to be able to come and like sort of have like learn things and like hang out for a little while.
[01:08:35]  We don't want like this like tense standoff situation.
[01:08:38]  But the administration decided to do this tense standoff situation.
[01:08:42]  You know, I talked to a bunch of guys from Cornell the other night before they went out and they that night occupied a portion of it.
[01:08:52]  And like a lot of these people are like facing, you know, they're afraid that they're going to be suspended or expelled.
[01:08:57]  Yes.
[01:08:57]  But they want their schools to divest from these companies that are.
[01:09:02]  I mean, listen, if you're some fucking person, you're like you're Palestinian or whatever, and you're going to one of these schools, it must make you feel fucking crazy that the school is invested in companies that like could potentially kill family members of yours.
[01:09:15]  I mean, that's at the Gaza encampment, one of their spokeswomen who I didn't talk to, but like over a dozen of her family members have been killed in Gaza since the war started.
[01:09:26]  And it's like, how is that person supposed to that?
[01:09:29]  I mean, what is that person supposed to do?
[01:09:32]  Just be like, well, I respect, you know, I respect the right of the Alan Dershwood scholars at the school to like, to be pro.
[01:09:42]  I mean, it's absurd.
[01:09:44]  It's fucking absurd.
[01:09:46]  But it doesn't matter because I sound like such a like about this, but like it really is.
[01:09:51]  You can do whatever you want.
[01:09:53]  If someone's Palestinian, whatever you want.
[01:09:55]  You can say whatever you want.
[01:09:56]  Look at what happened just yesterday with these fucking pro-Israel fascist gangs that showed up outside of Colombia that were literally like banging on trying to scale the fucking gates that were locked.
[01:10:09]  Yeah.
[01:10:10]  Trying to scale the gates to get into the campus, like waving these, by the way, terrifying flags of an American flag melting into the Israeli flag, which is maybe the worst fascist symbol I've ever fucking seen.
[01:10:24]  But they're literally chanting to these kids, oh, you want to camp, go to Gaza.
[01:10:30]  You feel like camp, go to Gaza.
[01:10:31]  Like, oh, if you guys like camping, go to the concentration camp that we built.
[01:10:36]  Or the camp, the camps, the refugee camps that are set up in there, not even refugee, because they're already often coming from refugee camps, but like the UNRWA tents that are set up there.
[01:10:47]  It's like, it's fucking crazy.
[01:10:49]  I mean, that's the thing too, is like so much has been made.
[01:10:52]  The fucking White House made a statement about the anti-Semitism and the violence at Columbia.
[01:10:58]  And I think they're referring to like a couple, let's say, unsophisticated individuals outside of the gate.
[01:11:02]  No, crazy people.
[01:11:04]  Crazy focators.
[01:11:05]  The thing is.
[01:11:05]  There's just fucking crazy people that always show up at every protest to be crazy.
[01:11:09]  Everyone who's been to a protest knows about the crazy people.
[01:11:11]  At the Columbia encampment, which is taking place inside of these gates, if you're a student, you can get in those gates.
[01:11:17]  The people outside the gates, nobody knows who the fuck they are.
[01:11:22]  You know what I mean?
[01:11:22]  That's like a student movement doing that.
[01:11:24]  And so the New York Times becomes your political opinions could possibly attract somebody who has this political opinion that is a nasty one that we don't like, that is violence, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever.
[01:11:36]  And like, it is really, what it is, is a fucking, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's, this is a concerted effort to squash pro-Palestinian students in particular.
[01:11:46]  Yeah, I mean, but it's like, we all know this.
[01:11:48]  We all know this.
[01:11:48]  We all know it's cynical.
[01:11:50]  We all know it's absurd to the point that it feels like, I don't even know what the point is in even arguing this shit anymore.
[01:11:58]  Like I'm so fucking sick of it.
[01:12:01]  Like I'm sick of even arguing the, there's no nuances.
[01:12:04]  I don't want to fucking hear about it anymore.
[01:12:05]  The situation in Gaza is so patently absurd and continuing to get more absurd.
[01:12:11]  Yeah.
[01:12:12]  I mean, it's like, how many more people?
[01:12:14]  40, 50, 60,000 people will die.
[01:12:18]  Yeah.
[01:12:18]  It's just that even calling for a ceasefire feels like a joke.
[01:12:23]  It feels like a fucking joke.
[01:12:25]  Yeah.
[01:12:26]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:12:27]  Like, I don't, I can't entertain any of these people anymore.
[01:12:32]  And I don't think anyone else should.
[01:12:34]  Everything they're saying is in bad faith.
[01:12:36]  All of it is wrong.
[01:12:37]  And all of it's designed to fucking hurt you.
[01:12:40]  Yeah.
[01:12:40]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:12:41]  And for years, there's been like the Canary Project shit, like these well-funded, well-organized, well-resourced in every way organizations that are dedicated to trying as hard as they can to ruin the lives of people who are in favor of the Palestinian movement.
[01:13:01]  Now we see this shit into fucking overdrive.
[01:13:04]  And the fact that it is co-signed by people, by politicians all across the fucking political spectrum is insane.
[01:13:11]  I mean, it is just like contrasting what I saw at the encampment with what the shit that is fucking coming out from the prime minister of fucking Israel, from the fucking White House in America, while in the meantime, in Gaza itself, you know, Israel has destroyed very much on purpose every single institution of higher learning in Gaza.
[01:13:34]  It has destroyed every school in Gaza is shut the fuck down.
[01:13:39]  40% of schools in Gaza were run by the UNRWA, the UNRWA.
[01:13:44]  After Israel released their fuck, they didn't release, they never released, they compiled their fake fucking dossier of 12, then maybe six, maybe four, we don't know exactly, UNRWA employees who participated in October 7th in some undefined way.

=== Frat Salting and Academic Hypocrisy (04:46) ===

[01:13:59]  It's fake.
[01:13:59]  It was fake.
[01:14:00]  It was, I mean, we don't know if it's fake or real because we never fucking see it.
[01:14:04]  They won't show it to anybody.
[01:14:05]  After they released, again, didn't release, after they claimed they had this dossier, the U.S. and all these Western European countries cut the fucking funding for the biggest agency which provides schooling, food, healthcare, housing to fucking Gazans.
[01:14:25]  You know, the IDF has bombed some of these universities, yeah.
[01:14:30]  But oftentimes what they do is they set up explosives in them and then film fucking TikTok videos and then blowing it up.
[01:14:37]  You know, 94, and this is from January.
[01:14:40]  I couldn't find more recent statistics.
[01:14:42]  But according to the Euromed Human Rights Monitor, over 94 professors in Gaza have been killed by the IDF since October 7th.
[01:14:51]  231 teachers have been killed.
[01:14:55]  4,300, and this is from January, so it has increased.
[01:14:59]  4,327 students have been killed and 7,819 have been injured.
[01:15:05]  I am sure the actual number, especially of the injured, is much higher.
[01:15:10]  Now, one wonders why a administrator of an institution of higher learning would be taking the side of the people who are killing these professors as opposed to taking the side of the people who, their own fucking students who want this to end.
[01:15:27]  And I think the reasoning, everybody knows the fucking reasoning, right?
[01:15:30]  It's donors and it's because they agree with Israel.
[01:15:33]  That's it.
[01:15:34]  Yeah.
[01:15:34]  And I just, you know, we've got a lot of, I think, academic leaning listeners.
[01:15:40]  I know what you do.
[01:15:41]  Yeah, I met a bunch.
[01:15:42]  I met a bunch at the Incampus.
[01:15:44]  You guys were very sorry.
[01:15:44]  But we've got students, we've got faculty members from all across.
[01:15:49]  And what I'm going to say is that I think they listen to us, so they're probably already there.
[01:15:54]  But if you can, you go stand with your fellow students, not just in the U.S., but in Gaza, and your fellow faculty members, not in the U.S., but in Gaza.
[01:16:03]  And you fucking stand up for what's right.
[01:16:05]  Yeah.
[01:16:06]  And you call things as they are.
[01:16:08]  And I'm just going to say this because I can't fucking take it anymore.
[01:16:12]  No more squishiness.
[01:16:14]  Yeah.
[01:16:14]  Stop entertaining these people.
[01:16:16]  We were just talking about this right before we started recording, where I was like, remember when everyone was having a fucking debate on whether or not they could say if Israel glassed a fucking hospital?
[01:16:28]  That wasn't that long ago.
[01:16:29]  I know.
[01:16:30]  That was just months ago.
[01:16:31]  I don't want to hear any more fucking, well, we also have to talk about what's actually really happening on the camp.
[01:16:38]  No, shut the fuck up.
[01:16:39]  Shut up.
[01:16:40]  Where's your Al Shifa terror center, dude?
[01:16:42]  No, I don't want to fucking hear anything.
[01:16:44]  Exactly.
[01:16:45]  I don't want to fucking hear it anymore, okay?
[01:16:47]  It is absurd that people are still to this day, like six months after this started, half a fucking year of this, are still pretending that there's two sides to this.
[01:17:01]  No.
[01:17:02]  It's ridiculous.
[01:17:02]  Do you see those mass graves?
[01:17:04]  Just shut the fuck up.
[01:17:04]  Exactly.
[01:17:05]  Just shut the fuck up and get your ass outside.
[01:17:20]  With that being said, I have joined a frat.
[01:17:24]  Yeah, that's called salting.
[01:17:25]  It's salting.
[01:17:26]  You're right.
[01:17:26]  Salting a frat.
[01:17:27]  Salting a frat.
[01:17:28]  Well, actually, I'm salting for a frat at a non-fraternity house of guys.
[01:17:33]  I'm salty for a frat at a sorority.
[01:17:35]  At a sorority.
[01:17:36]  So we're turning it into, well, I'm slowly convincing the ladies to move out because, of course, my body odor and frankly melodarist.
[01:17:44]  That's also kind of skunk, but it's like a different, because you're the skunk.
[01:17:47]  I'm the skunk.
[01:17:49]  You know, I stink and I'm rude.
[01:17:51]  I stink and I'm rude.
[01:17:52]  I stink and I'm rude.
[01:17:53]  That's your frat nickname, the skunk.
[01:17:54]  The skunk.
[01:17:55]  Which frat did you join?
[01:17:57]  You wouldn't know it.
[01:17:58]  It's Canadian.
[01:17:59]  It's Canadian.
[01:18:00]  It's just started in Canada.
[01:18:01]  It's Delta Caligula Judea.
[01:18:07]  You know, AE Pie is the Jewish frat.
[01:18:09]  AE Pie?
[01:18:09]  Yeah.
[01:18:10]  AE Pie.
[01:18:12]  Yeah, the Jewish frat?
[01:18:14]  I was in a fraternity.
[01:18:15]  You were?
[01:18:16]  Yeah.
[01:18:16]  That's, isn't that weird?
[01:18:18]  Weird.
[01:18:19]  AE Pie were fucking annoying ass losers on my campus.
[01:18:22]  Were you not in that one?
[01:18:23]  No.
[01:18:23]  Which were you in?
[01:18:24]  I'm not going to say.
[01:18:26]  Okay.
[01:18:27]  You got to tell me afterwards.
[01:18:29]  I always wanted to, when I went to city college for like one month every few years before dropping out before the semester ended, I think I completed like a semester of one class there.
[01:18:41]  I was always like, this place would be sick with some fucking community college frats.

=== Increasingly Absurd Reality (06:02) ===

[01:18:46]  But I do think, I really quick, just coming back to stuff, it does, doesn't it feel like everything is getting like increasingly, I keep using this word, but more and more absurd.
[01:18:56]  Yeah.
[01:18:57]  Like I see like going to those protests, like you've said, going to the campuses, and then you see the media coverage.
[01:19:02]  Like the difference is like so stark, it's like, it's crazy.
[01:19:05]  You're just, you're literally like, it's like a fake reality that people are talking about in the most like literal sense.
[01:19:12]  And that coupled with the coverage of what's happening and the and like people having arguments about things that aren't even of consequence or of any relation to what's actually happening that we all know is happening in Gaza.
[01:19:29]  Yeah.
[01:19:30]  It's like, I feel like it's just, I know it sounds so stupid, but it's like more and more willing.
[01:19:35]  Like I feel like I constantly gaslit like more and more and more and more that like there's just an alternative reality.
[01:19:42]  Like do people actually believe this or are they just continuing to go on with the motions of creating this alternate reality because they can't deal with the fact that it's fake?
[01:19:53]  Well, one is left to think that it's either that, it's either they're creating their own reality or like they frankly, they agree with Israel's goals and objectives.
[01:20:01]  Yeah.
[01:20:01]  You know, I mean, that's really like what it is here, right?
[01:20:05]  I mean, it's funny too, because you think about it, like is the whole, like this is so decoupled from finding the, when the fuck do you hear about the hostages anymore?
[01:20:14]  Except for the- Actually, I saw some counter-protesters at Princeton with hostage flyers and I was like, damn, vintage.
[01:20:19]  You know, this is, this is, this is about, like, this is Israel and its allies sensing an opportunity and taking it.
[01:20:29]  And like, you're either, you literally, you are either with them or against them.
[01:20:33]  And like, they want this to be decoupled from Gaza and like have this be like, this is about students being brainwashed by TikTok or Russian or Chinese.
[01:20:42]  Yeah.
[01:20:42]  Yeah.
[01:20:42]  What was it?
[01:20:43]  Did Pelosi come out and say it was the Russians?
[01:20:45]  Russians are Chinese.
[01:20:46]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:20:48]  It's just like, it's so, they just, they don't, they don't want the, there is no getting around the fact that like there are mass graves with children in Gaza.
[01:20:59]  Like there's no getting around that fact.
[01:21:01]  And, and they.
[01:21:03]  Handcuffed and.
[01:21:04]  Yeah.
[01:21:04]  Oh, and they see the Pallywood shit.
[01:21:06]  You know, they talk about, oh, it's actually the Palestinians do this themselves.
[01:21:10]  It's all a fucking, yeah, I'm sure.
[01:21:12]  Yeah.
[01:21:12]  Yeah, sorry.
[01:21:12]  I know.
[01:21:13]  It makes me fucking sick.
[01:21:14]  It's fucking insane.
[01:21:15]  I think also, but I, but at the same time, it feels very precarious.
[01:21:20]  Like it does, it feels like Israel increasingly feels like a fiction that cannot sustain itself.
[01:21:27]  Yeah.
[01:21:28]  And I know that sounds very hopeful and very like the arc of history benefits, but like legitimately, I mean this.
[01:21:33]  Like what the three options for the continuity of this, for the continuation of this fucking country, and you know, with America's backing, are like, you know, you can maintain the status quo, which requires like increasingly more violent repression, including obviously genocide.
[01:21:54]  Yeah.
[01:21:56]  You can retreat to the UN boundaries, leave the occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and in East Jerusalem.
[01:22:04]  That's not going to happen.
[01:22:05]  Yeah.
[01:22:06]  Or you can grant the Palestinians full political citizenship.
[01:22:14]  Those are the options.
[01:22:15]  And all three of those have dire political consequences that, by the way, you reap after putting, you know, three, four generations of people in a fucking prison camp.
[01:22:26]  Yeah.
[01:22:27]  But that's it.
[01:22:29]  Those are the fucking options.
[01:22:30]  Like, how does this, how does this continue?
[01:22:34]  It can't.
[01:22:35]  I wouldn't say that because it will.
[01:22:37]  It'll become more barbaric.
[01:22:39]  I don't know how it will, but it will.
[01:22:41]  I mean, I hope not, but it shows very few signs of slowing down.
[01:22:48]  And, you know, as Israel becomes increasingly isolated, I don't think it'll become totally isolated.
[01:22:52]  But as it becomes increasingly isolated, I think we'll see more and more, let's say, irrational actions from the leadership there.
[01:23:00]  You know, my main hope at this point is, you know, we were talking too before the episode, like how the calls are calling for a ceasefire now seems so silly, you know?
[01:23:10]  Yeah, I mean, this is what I say.
[01:23:11]  U.S., I want to invoke responsibility to protect RPA.
[01:23:16]  We have a responsibility to protect, and that means we need to bomb Israel.
[01:23:20]  I walked through the hallowed halls of SIPA at Columbia yesterday, and I absorbed during my time there, like some kind of parasite or a leech, all previous foreign policy experience of everybody who's walked through there.
[01:23:35]  And that leads me to believe that we need boots on the ground in Jerusalem.
[01:23:39]  Yes.
[01:23:39]  Switch it to motherfucking, we need select fire.
[01:23:43]  Dude, glass it, bomb it.
[01:23:44]  No, it up.
[01:23:46]  I wouldn't say bomb it.
[01:23:47]  I would say this.
[01:23:48]  Occupation with me is a kind of satrap.
[01:23:50]  Satrap.
[01:23:51]  You know what I mean?
[01:23:52]  Like, I think that we need to occupy the territories of Israel.
[01:23:57]  Interesting.
[01:23:57]  And then I think that I should sort of rule over them as a kind of like, as a, as like a viceroy.
[01:24:02]  Viceroy.
[01:24:05]  Yeah, you and your cow.
[01:24:06]  You know, and I think that I should search for precious metals in Tel Aviv.
[01:24:10]  Me and my cows.
[01:24:11]  And I think that, I just think that I should.
[01:24:14]  I think that would be good.
[01:24:15]  I just think we should fucking bomb it.
[01:24:17]  Smothering.
[01:24:18]  All right, baby.
[01:24:22]  Remember when they said that about Iran?
[01:24:24]  Yeah.
[01:24:24]  Oh, yeah.
[01:24:25]  That's what I'm referencing.
[01:24:27]  All right, well, with that being said, my name is.
[01:24:29]  They're going to still do that, man.
[01:24:30]  I know.
[01:24:31]  They got to hold baby back.
[01:24:33]  I hope, man.
[01:24:33]  I hope.
[01:24:34]  Hold it back.
[01:24:36]  I'm Liz.
[01:24:37]  We are, of course, joined by producer Young Chomsky, and this has been Truin On.
[01:24:44]  And this episode probably put us on a website.
[01:24:47]  We'll see you next time.
[01:24:48]  Bye-bye.