Octopus Overlords

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 10:29 am Good thing there's more video of these protests than episodes of One Piece.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 11:14 am I'm trying to work my way through One Piece now. Only 1094 episodes left!

Also latest Harvard poll shows that these protest represent only a fraction of young Americans, most of whom don't give a shit one way or the other about this conflict.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 11:19 am The song is "stop, *hey*, what's that sound..."

YellowKing wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 11:14 am Also latest Harvard poll shows that these protest represent only a fraction of young Americans, most of whom don't give a shit one way or the other about this conflict.

hepcat wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 9:57 am That is unacceptable behavior on the part of the police. Someone needs to get fired over this. You can’t be a good cop AND a thug.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 11:14 am I'm trying to work my way through One Piece now. Only 1094 episodes left!

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested Wednesday that he was dissatisfied with the arrests of hundreds of U.S. college students—some of whom were violently detained by large groups of police officers—in the last week at a growing number of protests against universities' complicity in Israel's massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.

Netanyahu called the students who have set up encampments in solidarity with Palestinians "antisemitic mobs" and accused them of attacking Jewish students and faculty—despite the fact that Jewish organizers have been among those protesting Israel's bombardment of Gaza and demanding a cease-fire.

As I separated from Netanel and tried to walk through, the wall of protest organizers in front of me remained. When I said, “I can walk. I have freedom of movement,” they mocked me: “Do you hear that, everybody? She can walk!”

Before too long, the protesters encircled me in addition to the human blockade. Their arms linked, and they danced in a circle around me so that I was pinned between them, the human blockade, and a wall. Some other demonstrators noticed this and joined in on the taunting.

They pointed their middle fingers at me and yelled “Free Palestine,” and the taunting continued until a six-foot-something male protester holding a Palestinian flag waved the flag in my face and then stabbed me with it in my left eye.

My assailant was masked and wearing a keffiyeh, concealing his identity. He also wore glasses and a black jacket. I started to yell and chase after him, but the wall of students continued to block me as I screamed. Next, I went to the Yale police, but they offered little in the way of assistance. They told me that their orders came from administrators who weren’t present at the demonstration, and that there were only seven officers to handle a crowd of about 500. So I was checked out by an ambulance EMT, who recommended I go to the hospital.

The midnight demonstration, the encampment, the violence, all of it violates Yale policy. Some of it, like my assault, also violates state and federal law. Yet nothing meaningful seems to happen in response. Given Yale’s permissiveness, I had the sinking feeling that someone would get hurt. I just didn’t expect it to be me.

I felt pressure where the stick of the flag had hit my left eye and had a headache last night and much of today. I’m okay now, though. But last night, sitting in the hospital, I couldn’t help but think of my mother, Shahnaz, who grew up in Iran. Her neighbors threw rocks at her for being a Jew. She has a scar on her eyelid to this day.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 1:05 am I made an exception and watched the stabbing video without checking the source. I won't make that mistake again.

What the fuck was that? The whole point was to call her a liar. It's a bullshit video from a bullshit source, and I'm ashamed to see it on OO.

Take your garbage somewhere else.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 1:05 am I made an exception and watched the stabbing video without checking the source. I won't make that mistake again.

What the fuck was that? The whole point was to call her a liar. It's a bullshit video from a bullshit source, and I'm ashamed to see it on OO.

Take your garbage somewhere else.

Victoria Raverna wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 5:00 am

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 1:05 am I made an exception and watched the stabbing video without checking the source. I won't make that mistake again.

What the fuck was that? The whole point was to call her a liar. It's a bullshit video from a bullshit source, and I'm ashamed to see it on OO.

Take your garbage somewhere else.

BTW, the video of the assault was recorded by herself. It showed that her story was bullshit. Why you're ashamed to see the truth?

She was accidentally hit by the flag but she made it into of being assaulted because she is a Jewish student.

Kraken wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 1:22 am This is why I only watch videos featuring cats.

hepcat wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 11:27 am Honestly, this video of the protestors physically blocking the path of a Jewish student tells me that the protestors (at least some of them) are guilty of being, in the very least, assholes.

Zarathud wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 12:00 pm An absolutely foreseeable consequence of protesting against Israel while waving a flag on campus, which potentially places liability on the protestor for their “accidental” actions if sued. VR will go to any length to apologize for the actions of the Palestinian protesters. Unsurprising.

hepcat wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 11:27 am Also, the video purporting to prove she wasn't intentionally stabbed didn't really prove whether she was or not. I'm not saying she was (and let's face it, both sides are guilty of drama to support their viewpoints right now), but I'm also saying that wasn't exactly an "AH HA" type of video like you say it is.

Holman wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 12:59 pm

hepcat wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 11:27 am Honestly, this video of the protestors physically blocking the path of a Jewish student tells me that the protestors (at least some of them) are guilty of being, in the very least, assholes.

That's absolutely true. But then we live in a world where truly vile assholes can be 2% of the thing and get 98% of the attention. Usually that's *why* they're assholes.

My wife (an administrator at U Penn) spent time walking through Penn's encampment on a couple of different days this week. She found it respectful of others and full of lots of positive energy. Even the boundary between the encampment and the pro-Israeli counter-protest was peaceful.

Police presence was minimal and intentionally low-key (e.g. bike cops instead of stormtroopers, etc).

Victoria Raverna wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 5:00 am

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 1:05 am I made an exception and watched the stabbing video without checking the source. I won't make that mistake again.

What the fuck was that? The whole point was to call her a liar. It's a bullshit video from a bullshit source, and I'm ashamed to see it on OO.

Take your garbage somewhere else.

BTW, the video of the assault was recorded by herself. It showed that her story was bullshit. Why you're ashamed to see the truth?

She was accidentally hit by the flag but she made it into of being assaulted because she is a Jewish student.

Why you're ashamed to see the truth?

Holman wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 2:00 pm Most of the "encampment" type protests have sprung up in solidarity with the students at Columbia after the U cracked down on them with the NYPD. Had Columbia merely let the encampment run its course (graduate is like two weeks away), the press attention and copycat movements would have been much less intense.

Authorities never learn that arrests and crackdowns *always* inflame things and never suppress them.

Of course I guess I should note too the Columbia's protests (being NYC) attracted a lot of outside agitation on both sides. Nobody was going to the let that opportunity pass by.

Victoria Raverna wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 1:18 pmIt was clearly an accident. The protestor waved the flag around and she accidental got hit by it. Far from being assaulted and stabbed in the eye. From her appearance on news media 2 days after the incident. It is clearly that she was not hurt as bad as she made it out to be. She know what she was doing. Get people to be against Pro Palestinian protestors and to silence free speech that she doesn't like.

Kurth wrote:

Holman wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 12:59 pm

hepcat wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 11:27 am Honestly, this video of the protestors physically blocking the path of a Jewish student tells me that the protestors (at least some of them) are guilty of being, in the very least, assholes.

That's absolutely true. But then we live in a world where truly vile assholes can be 2% of the thing and get 98% of the attention. Usually that's *why* they're assholes.

My wife (an administrator at U Penn) spent time walking through Penn's encampment on a couple of different days this week. She found it respectful of others and full of lots of positive energy. Even the boundary between the encampment and the pro-Israeli counter-protest was peaceful.

Police presence was minimal and intentionally low-key (e.g. bike cops instead of stormtroopers, etc).

There was a very good piece in the NYT yesterday (or Friday) asking the question, "Why have these protests exploded in the U.S. but generally not overseas?"

The answer was largely that it's a matter of our hyper-partisan political situation and the hyper-partisan and sensational news coverage these protests on U.S. campuses are receiving. Where similar protests occurred in the UK, they didn't receive nearly the attention from the news media and didn't result in an explosion of copy-cat protests and ever escalating tension. The Times referred to it as the "ovation" effect, where protests are analogized to someone giving a standing ovation in a theater. If people in the front of the theater begin to stand, it often results in a mass movement because those behind see them and begin to copy, if for no other reason than there's social pressure to do so.

Protestors overseas have largely been like people giving a standing ovation in the back row. Because they are not getting 24hour news coverage, no one is really seeing them and there's no mounting pressure for others to join.

I'm concerned that the same analysis applies to the violence and anti-semitism embedded in some factions of these protests. The more those anti-semitic actions and chants are given air, the more they may lead to their own ovation effect. I hope that's not the case and things remain largely the way Holman describes at Penn.

hepcat wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 11:27 am

Kraken wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 1:22 am This is why I only watch videos featuring cats.

But not Jewish cats, right!?!

Dogstar wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 9:27 am


The professor, who was arrested along with the chair of the Philosophy Department at the college, was charged with disorderly conduct and "simple battery of a police officer."

The student, Khymani James, made the comments during and after a disciplinary hearing with Columbia administrators that he recorded and then posted on Instagram.

The hearing, conducted by an administrator of the university’s Center for Student Success and Intervention, was focused on an earlier comment he shared on social media, in which he discussed fighting a Zionist. “I don’t fight to injure or for there to be a winner or a loser, I fight to kill,” he wrote.

A Columbia administrator asked, “Do you see why that is problematic in any way?”

Mr. James replied, “No.”

He also compared Zionists to white supremacists and Nazis. “These are all the same people,” he said. “The existence of them and the projects they have built, i.e. Israel, it’s all antithetical to peace. It’s all antithetical to peace. And so, yes, I feel very comfortable, very comfortable, calling for those people to die.”

Grifman wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 5:43 pm
I can tell you that if police are in the process of restraining someone, and you come up on police like that and get in their business, you will get arrested. She got too close to those officers while they were arresting someone who was resisting, and then she moved in even closer. They don't know who she is or what her intentions are. That will get your arrested.

Grifman wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 5:43 pm I can tell you that if police are in the process of restraining someone, and you come up on police like that and get in their business, you will get arrested. She got too close to those officers while they were arresting someone who was resisting, and then she moved in even closer. They don't know who she is or what her intentions are. That will get your arrested.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 1:59 pm The video was blurry, presented by a questionable source, and cut off in the middle.