DEMOCRACY NOW—In nearly four hours of grueling congressional testimony before the Republican-led Committee on Education and the Workforce, the president of Columbia University, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, said she had taken serious action against accusations of antisemitism on campus in recent months amid Israel’s assault on Gaza, including dismissing or removing five faculty members from the classroom, suspending 15 students and suspending two student groups — Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Shafik’s visit to Capitol Hill is the latest in a series of hearings on alleged antisemitism at elite U.S. private schools.
CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM
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How America’s Military-Industrial Complex Wins All of Its Wars Against America’s Taxpayers
by eric zuesse15 minutes readERIC ZUESSE—The “Supplemental” this year (Ukraine+Gaza+Taiwan) totals to $95.3B, which causes the original $886B ‘Defense’ (or Aggression) budget for this fiscal year to be: $886B+752.5B+95.3B=$1,733,800 billion, or $1.734T. However, even that is incomplete, because the entire U.S. intelligence community, CIA, DIA, and the many others, is classified, its budgets are secret, hidden from the public, and, of course, these are also important parts of the U.S. military; so, perhaps annual U.S. military spending is now around $2T. On 12 March 2024, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence headlined “DNI RELEASES FY 2025 BUDGET REQUEST FIGURE FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM” and publicly revealed (in accord with a 2007 law) “the aggregate amount of $73.4 billion in requested appropriations for the Fiscal Year 2025 National Intelligence Program (NIP),” and on 20 April 2024 I shall request from the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community the IC’s latest Audit Report in order to determine how complete that $73.4B figure is. I start with the assumption that it is the bare minimum of what the complete number is, and that what the maximum might be, and what the reality is, have remained top secret in this dictatorship.
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How wildlife crossings protect both animals and people
5 minutes readP. GREANVILLE—This project, which as an added benefit creates jobs in the US, something badly needed at this point, costs a pittance compared to the obscene sums (such as the US$ 95 billion recently approved by our non-representative political class) to be squandered on repulsively criminal regimes in Ukraine and Israel, not to mention to pick an idiotic and equally criminal fight with China. Criminal because a war with China will be mind-boggingly destructive to everyone on this planet, including Americans, who—assuming they survive— will see their already tenuous standard of living plummet dramatically as a result of a conflict “of choice” started by the US establishment.
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PATRICE GREANVILLE—As the title implies, and wasting little time in preparing the audience for what will surely be a disturbing argument to many, the author lays out his case against white progressives‚ or, to be precise, the liberal/social democratic complacent legions of mostly well-educated middle and upper middle class activists‚ who are deemed “delusional” not only in the ineffectual tactics and strategies they pursue (which the ruling elithes are only too happy to accommodate as per a well-scripted minuet), but in the belief that they are actually performing revolutionary acts…
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STEPHEN KARGANOVIC—The false narrative of “Srebrenica genocide” has been picked apart relentlessly over the last decade and a half, knocking out every one of its propaganda props. As Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, said a few days ago “according to the original definition of genocide, which holds that it is an attempt to destroy an entire ethnic group, the crime committed in Srebrenica cannot be an act of genocide. Serbian forces let go all women and children before executing the men, some of whom were combatants. I do not consider the General Assembly of the United Nations to be competent to determine whether or not an event was genocide.”