You know, it's really funny when an exact hypothetical comes true. Like, a week ago, I asked the question, which no one answered: Would it be DEI for a webpage about a medal winner to mention the fact he was gay and was only able to join the military after Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed?
You know, a webpage that had a person mention the basic factual information that the military had policies against homosexuality for a while. Not promoting any sort of 'diversity', but 'This used to be true, and no longer is'. Should that webpage be removed?
Turn out, my hypothetical was even softer than what actually happened (Softer in the sense that homophobia still is more accepted than racism.): The military is removing pages that mention that _Black people_ didn't have equality in the service.
I guess the only question is: Is this just general bigotry, or is it a deliberate attempt to rewrite history? Or is that a false distinction?
2025-03-16 12:46:41
So, the DoD has delete their page about Medal of Honor winner Charles Calvin Rodgers. If you search for 'Charles Calvin Rodgers site:defense.gov' on duckduckgo, you'll see where it's supposed to be as the first result, which is this:
This now (Very slowly in my browser?) redirects to almost the same US, but the last part is now: /deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/ Which doesn't actually seem to exist, so weird redirect.
But he's apparently a DEI Medal of Honor! Let's check the Wayback for what the page used to say about his DEI Medal of Honor:
Rogers ran through a hail of exploding shells to rally his dazed crewmen into firing their howitzers back at the much larger enemy. Despite being hit by an exploding round, he led some of those men in a ground battle against enemy soldiers who'd breached the howitzer's position. Rogers was again wounded during that foray, but he continued fighting, killing several enemy soldiers and driving the rest back.
Rogers refused medical attention and instead worked to get the defensive perimeter set back up.
When more enemy troops poured through a different section of the defensive line, Rogers directed that artillery fire, too, and led another successful counterattack on the charging forces, encouraging his men throughout the difficult endeavor.
At dawn, the enemy tried to overrun the base a third time, so Rogers continued directing his unit's fire. He even joined a struggling howitzer crew after several men were hit by enemy fire and the gun had been rendered inoperable. Rogers helped the crew get the massive gun operating again, but in doing so, he was hit a third time. He could no longer physically help his men, but he continued to direct and encourage them.
Rogers' valor helped push back the enemy that day, which finally retreated for good. Twelve U.S. soldiers died and dozens more were wounded; however, Army records show that the casualties on the enemy's side were much higher.
I'm not entirely sure what people are calling DEI these days, but...I don't think that's it. Is there something else...got a bridge named after him...given a Medal of Honor by President Nixon, Nixon doesn't sound very DEI...man, I am completely baffled. I wonder if it's this first sentence:
From the 1950's to the 1980's, a lot changed in America and abroad, and Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers served through all of it. As a Black man, he worked for gender and race equality while in the service.
You know what? This is probably more malicious compliance.
The protesters weren’t disrupting the University over settlements, they were upset the Jews won’t tolerate terrorism and were fighting a war.
The protest was literally over the fact that the university was investing in companies that profited off the conflict.
You can't just invent what the protests were over. And, also, protests of a university are about the behavior _of the university_. People do understand that, right? When someone protests an entity, it's because they want _that specific entity_ to do something different. Otherwise, it's just a rally.
We have an actual list of demands...which no one seems to have bothered to reprint and the websites removed, so let me instead like to the _response_ to these demands, where it's made extremely clear everyone understands what the protestors are asking for:
I don’t see why the openly genocidal Palestinians should be assumed to have good intentions.
But you're fine with the openly genocidal Israeli government, which is literally, at this very moment, talking to other countries about removing Palestinians from Gaza?
Urban warfare is “genocide” if Jews do it, but not if anyone else does.
Urban warfare is extremely prone to causing violence against civilians, a fact which is very well know. Which is why almost no country actually does it, and the ones that do generally don't use any of the sort of tactics Israel does, like long-range bombing, and instead focus more on close-quarter battles.
The ones that do bombing like that are places like _Syria_. Which, last I checked, was also roundly condemned for it.
Israel shouldn’t be an ethnostate because ethnostates are bad, however all non-Jewish ethnostates get a pass.
Get a pass from _who_? Who do you think are defending ethnostates? Which ones?
Saudi Arabia? Do you think it's the _left_ saying that we should work with Saudi Arabia?
And you do understand there is a difference between an ethnostate as a general concept, and one that is _actively holds territory containing people it does not extend rights to_, right?
Do you know what the last ethnostate like that was? Apartheid South Africa. And if you look into for ten second, you might realize it's the same people defending Israel, and that Israel itself was a huge defender of that place. In fact, Israel is the reason it took so long to do anything about that place!
Israel should put up with terrorism that non-Jews would never tolerate.
Dude, Islamic terrorists have killed, over the specific issue of Israel, more _Americans_ than Israelis in the past 25 years. They killed more on a single day! Granted, the US is larger so that's proportionally less.
But you know, here's the list of a general estimate of how much terrorism effects a country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Terrorism_Index
You'll notice Israel is second (Now, after Oct 7th), but you'll also notice how many other countries are within spitting distance. Plenty of people who have much more restrained behavior, along with some psychopaths we don't have anything to do with or don't even have functional countries. (Does anyone even know what's going on in Burkina Faso?)
Do you know where Israel was _before_ Oct 7th? It was below the US. For 2022, we were 28th, they were 30th.
It almost feels like the level of terrorism couldn't actually justify any of their behavior at that point.
Israel is expected to deal with a generational Right to Return.
It really is amazing how people do not understand 'Abstract demands that exist as a resistance rally point and are used as opening for negotiation' are not the same as 'things people would actually need done to accept something'.
I have pointed out before how general cries of protest are interpreted as explicit demands by Palestine in a way that _literally no others are_. The same way that general talk of having a struggle against people is a holy war, because we've decided not to translate the word jihad so that being in a fight is called being in a jihad and literally all fighters are 'jihadists' And we've apparently completely decided to just invent a new meaning of martyr, despite that being an English word.
Waving keys around and talking about reclaim houses is a _rallying cry_, in the same way that 'pry my gun from my cold death hands' or 'give me liberty or give me death' is. 'Remember the Alamo' on Texas license plates is not a battlecry to go kill Mexicans, one hopes. And talking about 'continuing the fight' is not demanding violence.
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Anyway, Israel is not 'expected' to actually let people return. What is expected is that the right of return will be used as _concessions_ in negotiation. That Israel will go 'We won't give you back your houses, instead we will pay for new houses' or something like that. And maybe, allow some small symbolic return of very historic communities it uprooted, or even trade some land and call that 'returning'.
But that would only work if Israel was, at any point, trying to fix this situation. They are perfectly happen with this situation, because allows them to continue their plans to end up with all of what they consider as their birthright.
Zionism is the idea that the Jews should have a country. Ergo anti-Zionism is the idea that they shouldn’t, i.e. Israel should be destroyed as a Jewish state.
Zionism is still an active political idea, not something that happened decades ago and finished. It is a political philosophy that is constantly taking land in the West Bank. It is what drives the illegal settlements. Do you think people have a right to oppose that political philosophy?
Also, 'destroyed' is doing an insane amount of work there. It's very interesting how you had to qualify the destruction 'as a Jewish state'.
Governments govern by consent of the governed. The concern should be protecting right of minorities, not demanding the ability to exclude entire sections of the population because they will vote wrong, but having control over them anyway via occupation and imprisonment.
Israel can either choose to be a democracy over the entire area (Which will probably peacefully vote to change it in a lot of ways), or they can withdraw to areas that only has the people they want in them.
That seems seriously antisemitic on the face of it,
The idea that opposing the nation of Israel is antisemitic assigns the goals and behavior of Israel to the Jewish people as a whole.
and that’s without the real world likelihood that it would require a second holocaust.
I find it interesting how we can't call an actual thing that is happening to people a genocide, but somehow it's fine to call a totally imaginary thing that isn't even close to happening a holocaust.
I’ve pointed this out on this thread before that many of the “arguments” used against Israel are never used against non-Jews.
Let me guess. You're going to bring up examples of small population replacements that happened and _ended_. Aka, you're going to try to justify the Nakba. Which was a bunch of violence and isn't really the same thing as a war settlement, but, sure, let's pretend it was the same. Let's pretend that should been the end of it. Indeed, that's the difference. Those _ended_.
You know, a thing that _could_ have happened at any point after 1967 after Israel found itself occupying Palestine? Israel could have said 'Okay, line drawn here, and we're gone'...and no, before you start talking terrorism, it took a good two decades for Palestinians to ramped up to even throwing-rocks-at-soldiers levels of violence, the first Intifada, in 1987. And that started because Israel refused to leave and was settling the place and talking, very openly, about how the entire area was theirs.
Or, alternately, Israel could have simply declared that entire area was Israel, in 1967. I honestly doubt anyone would have done anything about it. Jordan did the same thing a decade earlier with the West Bank and no one did. No country really owned that land, there was no one to say no. People would have grumbled, but it would have quickly disappeared.
But...that would have let all those Palestinians vote. Which Zionism does not allow.
That's what Zionism is. It requires a _Jewish_ state, which requires a Jewish majority so that the Jewishness of the state cannot change by democracy, but it also claims, via mythos, ownership of an territorial area that _is not majority Jewish_. There's no way to square that circle. Except by removing some of the non-Jews.
That's that side that requires a holocaust, or at least ethnic cleansing. The other side is just a democracy.
Columbia is not punishing the students for what they’ve said, just for the things that are normally illegal. Almost like the things which are normally illegal are still illegal, even if you call it “speech”.
What Columbia is doing is completely legal and entirely within their rights as a private university. What they are doing probably would be legal even if they were a public university, but as a private university, it certainly is legal. I don't particularly think it's a _good_ idea, but it is certainly something they are allowed to do. (Although I do think it might actually be good idea to have laws that stop universities from refusing to confirm already-issued degrees, because that seems ripe for abuse and extortion. But there are no such laws, I just think they'd be good to have.)
The problem is what the Trump administration is demanding they do under the threat of the Federal government.
Including, perhaps, some of what Columbia just did because of those demands.
It's one thing for Columbia to do things because of their own free will, it's another to do things because they were extorted into it by the unconstitutional actions of the Trump administration. It's fair to not only complain about the Federal government doing that, but Columbia, a respected university with a long history of protests that they pretend they are proud of, caving to that without a whimper.
That said, we do not know if what they just did _was_ due to the Trump administration. We're just sorta guessing on that. It very much looks like it due to the timing, but extremely bad timing does sometimes happen.
Oh, is that the case? Man, I sure hope that a precedent wasn’t set earlier! It might result in absolutely *ZERO* sympathy!
Jaybird, you say sh*t like this assuming people know what the f*ck you're talking about, but no one ever does, because the thing you have linked it to when you evidentially end up having to explain is _extremely obviously_ not the same thing at all.
I am getting extremely tired of these conversations with you where you have to be repeatedly prompted to say what you mean. Something like half your posts here are implications that NO ONE FOLLOWS.
“Guys, why are you insisting on using the same rules we insisted on when we won the argument last time?”
Pointing out that public universities are not the exact same thing as 'the government' and thus can restrict certain things for proper functioning and safety with rules is not the same thing as _the actual government_ demanding they restrict things like that under the threat of legal punishment.
And none of that is the same thing as the Federal government making demands of private university.
Also, and I know everyone here is used to the quiet parts being said quietly, but that's not happening anymore, because we've move from crypto-fascism to open fascism. So they're just straight up it's about speech. Literally just saying that.
Read the bulleted item there about anti-"Zionist" discrimination, and tell me if you agree that is something that the government can demand a _private organization_ take the position of and enforce upon students.
The beatings will continue until morale improves. Going to war with their students is possibly the stupidest thing Columbia could possibly do.
Incidentally, weird how no one seems to be talking about the implications of the Federal Government forcing a private university to punish students, because the Federal Government objected to the speech of those students.
I remind people, the government has no ability to demand a private organization punish people for violating the law. That would be utterly insane, on top of violating freedom of association.
We can sidestep the question here of to what extent Columbia _could_ punish speech, a thing that gets blurry at private universities, because we all agree they can punish actual crimes like vandalism and trespass. Hell, I think it's reasonable to punish those things even if there is no criminal convictions.
But I also I think we can all agree that they can _choose not to_ punish those things, and the government has no right to interfere, including no right to extort them with government money until they do. If the government wishes to punish students for that, they can (and did) charge them with crimes.
This is on top of the fact that the government is clearly doing this because of the content of the _speech_ and openly admits as much, claiming the problem is antisemitism. And I'm just going sidestep the whole discussion as to if it actually was antisemitism was by pointing out that the Federal government has _absolutely no power_ to punish antisemitic speech, and in fact is constitutionally barred from doing so, just like it is barred from punishing all speech. And it certainly doesn't have the power to extort private entities into punishing it!
This used to be something that a lot of people here worried about, how public universities would have codes of conduct that stopped this sort of thing, and it was pointed out that public universities are not really 'the government', they are organizations that happen to owned by the government but have to have the same sort of rules as any sort of housing and workplaces and education, general rules about harassment and safety and things.
Yes, I get what you were talking about, how Kash's tweet was received. I was pointing out how manipulative it was to start with.
It failed at accomplishing anything, but only because the the Republican base is sorta on a hilarious tangent that I hope they continue to be on. Please, Republicans on Twitter, keep insisting that the Trump administration do something it cannot possible do, because there is no real 'list' that hasn't been released. (I have no idea why anyone thinks there is going to be some actual itemized documentation of 'People who have taken advantage of Epstein's underaged girls'.)
But I'm allowed to point out propaganda, even if it completely fails due to unrelated things. Especially since it actually did make it outside of Twitter, it's all over the far-right news.
And yes, it's nice that people are not falling for it and still pointing out the Epstein stuff, but I felt I had to point out this incredibly obvious manipulation being done by the press, where 'US government employee arrested for completely unrelated fraud done to the government' is being used to help Trump's dismantling of government and vague allegations of fraud within the government.
Honestly, look the wording that Jaybird just used: FEMA fraud.
Why would anyone talk about 'defrauding FEMA' in that incredibly ambiguous way? Imagine if I said we need to defund the police and said there had been an example of 'cop murder', by which I actually meant killing a cop.
I like how you, and presumably everyone you read, phrased 'Director at Customs and Border Protection being arrested for FEMA fraud'. This has absolutely nothing to do with fraud _in_ the government, and is just someone _defrauding_ the government who happens to also work for the government. But people are happy yo imply otherwise.
And before you say 'They're not implying that', I will point out a trivial search on my part found there were three others literally charged with the same thing this week, announced at the same time, including one that did literally the same thing of defrauding FEMA for temporary living expenses for a house that was not destroyed:
Yet for some mysterious reason, it's this one person that is getting all the press. It's the only one _you_ even know about, because you are hooked directly into right-wing pipelines. And that's because she works for the government, and people can imply this is something to do with finding fraud in the government, despite the fact it is not.
Actually, let me clarify: When I say 'Can be challenged in court', what I mean is 'This has to be proven in court'.
Khalil doesn't have to affirmatively challenge it and force them to go to court, there already will be a hearing, in court, to verify this determination made by the Secretary of State.
Often those hearings are so pro-forma that they barely happen, because (idiotically) people in them have no right to a court-appointed lawyer(1), so often barely understand what is going on. But they do exist, and Khalil does have a lawyer.
1) Please note there are organizations who will represent these people for free, at least enough to present some options to them, but the fascists that are ICE (and the police used to be this way before Miranda), will not bother to _inform_ anyone of their rights.
“serious adverse foreign policy consequences” could be defined as “pissing off an ally we want to maintain good relations with” in my opinion.
So here's the actual rule:
An alien whose entry or proposed activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is inadmissible.
But there's an exception that applies
An alien, not described in clause (ii), shall not be excludable or subject to restrictions or conditions on entry into the United States under clause (i) because of the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States, unless the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.
So, to explain that: There's two different thresholds there that are similar. The first is much easier to reach, and can be done automatically across an entire group of people, and is probably meant to apply when 'People from X being in the country' or whatever could hypothetically present some foreign policy consequence. This is a very low bar that just requires a vague 'belief'.
This also can apply to specific people and things they do specifically, but _only_ when there are no 1st amendment issues. It doesn't say the words 1st amendment explicitly, but that's what 'beliefs, statements, or associations' would be. It's actually hard to think of a good example of this. Like...you could deport Superman under it, I guess, assuming he was otherwise legal. It's pretty easy to believe that his existence would have foreign policy implications.
But, there's an exception when there are 1st amendment issues, which would be here, because the issue is his speech and association. That requires the Secretary of State to determine that it would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.
The phrase 'would compromise' (not 'believe', but 'would' actually compromise) is important. What he does has to actually do it, or be demonstrated that it will, not that someone vaguely believes it can.
The phrase 'compelling...government interest' is equally important, and a lot of people just realized that phrasing (Which I bet people recognize) was secretly in there...and not only does it have to be a compelling government interest, which narrows things down, it has to be one about _foreign policy_, which narrows it down even more. It cannot, for example, be a 'compelling government interest' to allow students to attend and freely move about Colombia University, or to allow Colombia to invest money where it wants.
The exception then goes on to state that that 'the Secretary of State must notify on a timely basis the chairmen of the Committees on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives and of the Committees on the Judiciary and Foreign Relations of the Senate of the identity of the alien and the reasons for the determination.'
Moreover, this determination can be challenged in immigration court. (Actually, all this can, but if the determination didn't trigger the exception, all that would accomplish is requiring the State Department to prove it 'believes' something.)
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...also, kind of important: This rational for deporting Khalil means he not alleged to have commented a crime. And did not violate his immigration status. There's literally no wrongdoing asserted here, just that his (apparently entirely legal) actions have impacted US foreign policy to the extent the US government wishes him removed. Which they can do possibly do, we'll see what the immigration court says, but it's insane they think they can _arrest_ him for 'We have decided that we don't like you and don't want you here anymore'. Tell him, schedule him in front of a court, and then if he refuses to attend the court or then refuses to leave if he court says he has to go, at _that_ point you can arrest him.
But immigration law has always been extremely fascist, and I'm not sure they can't do what they did. I'm just saying it's absurd if they can.
Yeah, it sure is amazing how all the people talking about how trans people should compromise over 'sports' do not seem to notice how Republicans will literally take anti-trans bills as far as they can, and in fact openly and explicitly wish to outlaw being trans.
Did he protest in support of 10/7, or just in opposition to the then ongoing genocide? Do you have evidence he specifically supported the former? The Columbia protests were explicitly about the genocide, not 10/7.
I mean, technically speaking, no, they were about not any behavior of Israel.
I'm sure protestors were saying things about Israel's behavior, but the actual protests, the demands of the protestors, were explicitly about the fact that Colombia, a private school, was investing money in companies that benefited from the situation in Israel, or even were funding what was happening.
Those were the demands of the protest, that a private school stop doing actions with their investments.
This may seem a technical distinction, but it does matter if we start hypothesizing where the line of 'supporting terrorism' is. Because 'You, a private company, are doing crappy things and I'm protesting you until you stop', is...well, let's just say that it's hard to distinguish that from civil-rights sit-in. That's basically all protests.
So there's basically two choices:
Either the act of organizing the protest of Colombia (Not Israel, not US foreign policy, but _Colombia_) itself is what he's being punished for. Aka, protests are illegal. (And before anyone says 'No, only ones that do illegal things', please spend like fifteen seconds googling how easy it is for the police to make a protest 'illegal' by randomly defining what is legal in situations where it is literally impossible for a group of people to obey or even know what they're being told to do.)
Or he's being punished for what certain people have _said_ at the protest, because some people might have hypothetically said things that were supportive of Hamas. A thing he has very little control of, was not the actual point of the protest, and can easily be used to make any protest illegal simply be undercover people slipping in and saying those things.
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You know, it's really funny when an exact hypothetical comes true. Like, a week ago, I asked the question, which no one answered: Would it be DEI for a webpage about a medal winner to mention the fact he was gay and was only able to join the military after Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed?
You know, a webpage that had a person mention the basic factual information that the military had policies against homosexuality for a while. Not promoting any sort of 'diversity', but 'This used to be true, and no longer is'. Should that webpage be removed?
Turn out, my hypothetical was even softer than what actually happened (Softer in the sense that homophobia still is more accepted than racism.): The military is removing pages that mention that _Black people_ didn't have equality in the service.
I guess the only question is: Is this just general bigotry, or is it a deliberate attempt to rewrite history? Or is that a false distinction?
So, the DoD has delete their page about Medal of Honor winner Charles Calvin Rodgers. If you search for 'Charles Calvin Rodgers site:defense.gov' on duckduckgo, you'll see where it's supposed to be as the first result, which is this:
https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2824721/medal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/
This now (Very slowly in my browser?) redirects to almost the same US, but the last part is now: /deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/ Which doesn't actually seem to exist, so weird redirect.
But he's apparently a DEI Medal of Honor! Let's check the Wayback for what the page used to say about his DEI Medal of Honor:
I'm not entirely sure what people are calling DEI these days, but...I don't think that's it. Is there something else...got a bridge named after him...given a Medal of Honor by President Nixon, Nixon doesn't sound very DEI...man, I am completely baffled. I wonder if it's this first sentence:
You know what? This is probably more malicious compliance.
The protest was literally over the fact that the university was investing in companies that profited off the conflict.
You can't just invent what the protests were over. And, also, protests of a university are about the behavior _of the university_. People do understand that, right? When someone protests an entity, it's because they want _that specific entity_ to do something different. Otherwise, it's just a rally.
We have an actual list of demands...which no one seems to have bothered to reprint and the websites removed, so let me instead like to the _response_ to these demands, where it's made extremely clear everyone understands what the protestors are asking for:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/college-pro-palestine-protest-demands_n_662c2672e4b0c2fde1a5b467
But you're fine with the openly genocidal Israeli government, which is literally, at this very moment, talking to other countries about removing Palestinians from Gaza?
Urban warfare is extremely prone to causing violence against civilians, a fact which is very well know. Which is why almost no country actually does it, and the ones that do generally don't use any of the sort of tactics Israel does, like long-range bombing, and instead focus more on close-quarter battles.
The ones that do bombing like that are places like _Syria_. Which, last I checked, was also roundly condemned for it.
Get a pass from _who_? Who do you think are defending ethnostates? Which ones?
Saudi Arabia? Do you think it's the _left_ saying that we should work with Saudi Arabia?
And you do understand there is a difference between an ethnostate as a general concept, and one that is _actively holds territory containing people it does not extend rights to_, right?
Do you know what the last ethnostate like that was? Apartheid South Africa. And if you look into for ten second, you might realize it's the same people defending Israel, and that Israel itself was a huge defender of that place. In fact, Israel is the reason it took so long to do anything about that place!
Dude, Islamic terrorists have killed, over the specific issue of Israel, more _Americans_ than Israelis in the past 25 years. They killed more on a single day! Granted, the US is larger so that's proportionally less.
But you know, here's the list of a general estimate of how much terrorism effects a country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Terrorism_Index
You'll notice Israel is second (Now, after Oct 7th), but you'll also notice how many other countries are within spitting distance. Plenty of people who have much more restrained behavior, along with some psychopaths we don't have anything to do with or don't even have functional countries. (Does anyone even know what's going on in Burkina Faso?)
Do you know where Israel was _before_ Oct 7th? It was below the US. For 2022, we were 28th, they were 30th.
It almost feels like the level of terrorism couldn't actually justify any of their behavior at that point.
It really is amazing how people do not understand 'Abstract demands that exist as a resistance rally point and are used as opening for negotiation' are not the same as 'things people would actually need done to accept something'.
I have pointed out before how general cries of protest are interpreted as explicit demands by Palestine in a way that _literally no others are_. The same way that general talk of having a struggle against people is a holy war, because we've decided not to translate the word jihad so that being in a fight is called being in a jihad and literally all fighters are 'jihadists' And we've apparently completely decided to just invent a new meaning of martyr, despite that being an English word.
Waving keys around and talking about reclaim houses is a _rallying cry_, in the same way that 'pry my gun from my cold death hands' or 'give me liberty or give me death' is. 'Remember the Alamo' on Texas license plates is not a battlecry to go kill Mexicans, one hopes. And talking about 'continuing the fight' is not demanding violence.
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Anyway, Israel is not 'expected' to actually let people return. What is expected is that the right of return will be used as _concessions_ in negotiation. That Israel will go 'We won't give you back your houses, instead we will pay for new houses' or something like that. And maybe, allow some small symbolic return of very historic communities it uprooted, or even trade some land and call that 'returning'.
But that would only work if Israel was, at any point, trying to fix this situation. They are perfectly happen with this situation, because allows them to continue their plans to end up with all of what they consider as their birthright.
Zionism is still an active political idea, not something that happened decades ago and finished. It is a political philosophy that is constantly taking land in the West Bank. It is what drives the illegal settlements. Do you think people have a right to oppose that political philosophy?
Also, 'destroyed' is doing an insane amount of work there. It's very interesting how you had to qualify the destruction 'as a Jewish state'.
Governments govern by consent of the governed. The concern should be protecting right of minorities, not demanding the ability to exclude entire sections of the population because they will vote wrong, but having control over them anyway via occupation and imprisonment.
Israel can either choose to be a democracy over the entire area (Which will probably peacefully vote to change it in a lot of ways), or they can withdraw to areas that only has the people they want in them.
The idea that opposing the nation of Israel is antisemitic assigns the goals and behavior of Israel to the Jewish people as a whole.
I find it interesting how we can't call an actual thing that is happening to people a genocide, but somehow it's fine to call a totally imaginary thing that isn't even close to happening a holocaust.
Let me guess. You're going to bring up examples of small population replacements that happened and _ended_. Aka, you're going to try to justify the Nakba. Which was a bunch of violence and isn't really the same thing as a war settlement, but, sure, let's pretend it was the same. Let's pretend that should been the end of it. Indeed, that's the difference. Those _ended_.
You know, a thing that _could_ have happened at any point after 1967 after Israel found itself occupying Palestine? Israel could have said 'Okay, line drawn here, and we're gone'...and no, before you start talking terrorism, it took a good two decades for Palestinians to ramped up to even throwing-rocks-at-soldiers levels of violence, the first Intifada, in 1987. And that started because Israel refused to leave and was settling the place and talking, very openly, about how the entire area was theirs.
Or, alternately, Israel could have simply declared that entire area was Israel, in 1967. I honestly doubt anyone would have done anything about it. Jordan did the same thing a decade earlier with the West Bank and no one did. No country really owned that land, there was no one to say no. People would have grumbled, but it would have quickly disappeared.
But...that would have let all those Palestinians vote. Which Zionism does not allow.
That's what Zionism is. It requires a _Jewish_ state, which requires a Jewish majority so that the Jewishness of the state cannot change by democracy, but it also claims, via mythos, ownership of an territorial area that _is not majority Jewish_. There's no way to square that circle. Except by removing some of the non-Jews.
That's that side that requires a holocaust, or at least ethnic cleansing. The other side is just a democracy.
What Columbia is doing is completely legal and entirely within their rights as a private university. What they are doing probably would be legal even if they were a public university, but as a private university, it certainly is legal. I don't particularly think it's a _good_ idea, but it is certainly something they are allowed to do. (Although I do think it might actually be good idea to have laws that stop universities from refusing to confirm already-issued degrees, because that seems ripe for abuse and extortion. But there are no such laws, I just think they'd be good to have.)
The problem is what the Trump administration is demanding they do under the threat of the Federal government.
Including, perhaps, some of what Columbia just did because of those demands.
It's one thing for Columbia to do things because of their own free will, it's another to do things because they were extorted into it by the unconstitutional actions of the Trump administration. It's fair to not only complain about the Federal government doing that, but Columbia, a respected university with a long history of protests that they pretend they are proud of, caving to that without a whimper.
That said, we do not know if what they just did _was_ due to the Trump administration. We're just sorta guessing on that. It very much looks like it due to the timing, but extremely bad timing does sometimes happen.
Jaybird, you say sh*t like this assuming people know what the f*ck you're talking about, but no one ever does, because the thing you have linked it to when you evidentially end up having to explain is _extremely obviously_ not the same thing at all.
I am getting extremely tired of these conversations with you where you have to be repeatedly prompted to say what you mean. Something like half your posts here are implications that NO ONE FOLLOWS.
Pointing out that public universities are not the exact same thing as 'the government' and thus can restrict certain things for proper functioning and safety with rules is not the same thing as _the actual government_ demanding they restrict things like that under the threat of legal punishment.
And none of that is the same thing as the Federal government making demands of private university.
Also, and I know everyone here is used to the quiet parts being said quietly, but that's not happening anymore, because we've move from crypto-fascism to open fascism. So they're just straight up it's about speech. Literally just saying that.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/14/nyregion/columbia-letter.html
Read the bulleted item there about anti-"Zionist" discrimination, and tell me if you agree that is something that the government can demand a _private organization_ take the position of and enforce upon students.
That argument might be more persuasive if the government hadn't explicitly named anti-Zionism in the letter of demands it just sent to them.
Not antisemitism, mind you. Anti-Zionism.
The beatings will continue until morale improves. Going to war with their students is possibly the stupidest thing Columbia could possibly do.
Incidentally, weird how no one seems to be talking about the implications of the Federal Government forcing a private university to punish students, because the Federal Government objected to the speech of those students.
I remind people, the government has no ability to demand a private organization punish people for violating the law. That would be utterly insane, on top of violating freedom of association.
We can sidestep the question here of to what extent Columbia _could_ punish speech, a thing that gets blurry at private universities, because we all agree they can punish actual crimes like vandalism and trespass. Hell, I think it's reasonable to punish those things even if there is no criminal convictions.
But I also I think we can all agree that they can _choose not to_ punish those things, and the government has no right to interfere, including no right to extort them with government money until they do. If the government wishes to punish students for that, they can (and did) charge them with crimes.
This is on top of the fact that the government is clearly doing this because of the content of the _speech_ and openly admits as much, claiming the problem is antisemitism. And I'm just going sidestep the whole discussion as to if it actually was antisemitism was by pointing out that the Federal government has _absolutely no power_ to punish antisemitic speech, and in fact is constitutionally barred from doing so, just like it is barred from punishing all speech. And it certainly doesn't have the power to extort private entities into punishing it!
This used to be something that a lot of people here worried about, how public universities would have codes of conduct that stopped this sort of thing, and it was pointed out that public universities are not really 'the government', they are organizations that happen to owned by the government but have to have the same sort of rules as any sort of housing and workplaces and education, general rules about harassment and safety and things.
And a lot of people here objected to that logic.
Yes, I get what you were talking about, how Kash's tweet was received. I was pointing out how manipulative it was to start with.
It failed at accomplishing anything, but only because the the Republican base is sorta on a hilarious tangent that I hope they continue to be on. Please, Republicans on Twitter, keep insisting that the Trump administration do something it cannot possible do, because there is no real 'list' that hasn't been released. (I have no idea why anyone thinks there is going to be some actual itemized documentation of 'People who have taken advantage of Epstein's underaged girls'.)
But I'm allowed to point out propaganda, even if it completely fails due to unrelated things. Especially since it actually did make it outside of Twitter, it's all over the far-right news.
And yes, it's nice that people are not falling for it and still pointing out the Epstein stuff, but I felt I had to point out this incredibly obvious manipulation being done by the press, where 'US government employee arrested for completely unrelated fraud done to the government' is being used to help Trump's dismantling of government and vague allegations of fraud within the government.
Honestly, look the wording that Jaybird just used: FEMA fraud.
Why would anyone talk about 'defrauding FEMA' in that incredibly ambiguous way? Imagine if I said we need to defund the police and said there had been an example of 'cop murder', by which I actually meant killing a cop.
I like how you, and presumably everyone you read, phrased 'Director at Customs and Border Protection being arrested for FEMA fraud'. This has absolutely nothing to do with fraud _in_ the government, and is just someone _defrauding_ the government who happens to also work for the government. But people are happy yo imply otherwise.
And before you say 'They're not implying that', I will point out a trivial search on my part found there were three others literally charged with the same thing this week, announced at the same time, including one that did literally the same thing of defrauding FEMA for temporary living expenses for a house that was not destroyed:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/three-defendants-face-federal-charges-bilking-and-attempting-defraud-fema-fraudulent
Yet for some mysterious reason, it's this one person that is getting all the press. It's the only one _you_ even know about, because you are hooked directly into right-wing pipelines. And that's because she works for the government, and people can imply this is something to do with finding fraud in the government, despite the fact it is not.
Actually, let me clarify: When I say 'Can be challenged in court', what I mean is 'This has to be proven in court'.
Khalil doesn't have to affirmatively challenge it and force them to go to court, there already will be a hearing, in court, to verify this determination made by the Secretary of State.
Often those hearings are so pro-forma that they barely happen, because (idiotically) people in them have no right to a court-appointed lawyer(1), so often barely understand what is going on. But they do exist, and Khalil does have a lawyer.
1) Please note there are organizations who will represent these people for free, at least enough to present some options to them, but the fascists that are ICE (and the police used to be this way before Miranda), will not bother to _inform_ anyone of their rights.
So here's the actual rule:
But there's an exception that applies
So, to explain that: There's two different thresholds there that are similar. The first is much easier to reach, and can be done automatically across an entire group of people, and is probably meant to apply when 'People from X being in the country' or whatever could hypothetically present some foreign policy consequence. This is a very low bar that just requires a vague 'belief'.
This also can apply to specific people and things they do specifically, but _only_ when there are no 1st amendment issues. It doesn't say the words 1st amendment explicitly, but that's what 'beliefs, statements, or associations' would be. It's actually hard to think of a good example of this. Like...you could deport Superman under it, I guess, assuming he was otherwise legal. It's pretty easy to believe that his existence would have foreign policy implications.
But, there's an exception when there are 1st amendment issues, which would be here, because the issue is his speech and association. That requires the Secretary of State to determine that it would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.
The phrase 'would compromise' (not 'believe', but 'would' actually compromise) is important. What he does has to actually do it, or be demonstrated that it will, not that someone vaguely believes it can.
The phrase 'compelling...government interest' is equally important, and a lot of people just realized that phrasing (Which I bet people recognize) was secretly in there...and not only does it have to be a compelling government interest, which narrows things down, it has to be one about _foreign policy_, which narrows it down even more. It cannot, for example, be a 'compelling government interest' to allow students to attend and freely move about Colombia University, or to allow Colombia to invest money where it wants.
The exception then goes on to state that that 'the Secretary of State must notify on a timely basis the chairmen of the Committees on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives and of the Committees on the Judiciary and Foreign Relations of the Senate of the identity of the alien and the reasons for the determination.'
Moreover, this determination can be challenged in immigration court. (Actually, all this can, but if the determination didn't trigger the exception, all that would accomplish is requiring the State Department to prove it 'believes' something.)
--
...also, kind of important: This rational for deporting Khalil means he not alleged to have commented a crime. And did not violate his immigration status. There's literally no wrongdoing asserted here, just that his (apparently entirely legal) actions have impacted US foreign policy to the extent the US government wishes him removed. Which they can do possibly do, we'll see what the immigration court says, but it's insane they think they can _arrest_ him for 'We have decided that we don't like you and don't want you here anymore'. Tell him, schedule him in front of a court, and then if he refuses to attend the court or then refuses to leave if he court says he has to go, at _that_ point you can arrest him.
But immigration law has always been extremely fascist, and I'm not sure they can't do what they did. I'm just saying it's absurd if they can.
Yeah, it sure is amazing how all the people talking about how trans people should compromise over 'sports' do not seem to notice how Republicans will literally take anti-trans bills as far as they can, and in fact openly and explicitly wish to outlaw being trans.
I mean, technically speaking, no, they were about not any behavior of Israel.
I'm sure protestors were saying things about Israel's behavior, but the actual protests, the demands of the protestors, were explicitly about the fact that Colombia, a private school, was investing money in companies that benefited from the situation in Israel, or even were funding what was happening.
Those were the demands of the protest, that a private school stop doing actions with their investments.
This may seem a technical distinction, but it does matter if we start hypothesizing where the line of 'supporting terrorism' is. Because 'You, a private company, are doing crappy things and I'm protesting you until you stop', is...well, let's just say that it's hard to distinguish that from civil-rights sit-in. That's basically all protests.
So there's basically two choices:
Either the act of organizing the protest of Colombia (Not Israel, not US foreign policy, but _Colombia_) itself is what he's being punished for. Aka, protests are illegal. (And before anyone says 'No, only ones that do illegal things', please spend like fifteen seconds googling how easy it is for the police to make a protest 'illegal' by randomly defining what is legal in situations where it is literally impossible for a group of people to obey or even know what they're being told to do.)
Or he's being punished for what certain people have _said_ at the protest, because some people might have hypothetically said things that were supportive of Hamas. A thing he has very little control of, was not the actual point of the protest, and can easily be used to make any protest illegal simply be undercover people slipping in and saying those things.