Low Sodium Diet May Be Stressing You Out

 by Jennifer Sweenie via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

There is a link between salt intake and stress, and it’s probably not what you think. While we are well aware of the purported dangers associated with a high-sodium diet, many of us are not aware that too little sodium comes with its own set of issues. When it comes to stress, salt plays an important role in helping flush cortisol from the body.

A study published in Clinical Endocrinology in 2020 showed that an increase in salt consumption leads to a rise in cortisol levels in your urine and lower cortisol levels in your bloodstream. What does this potentially mean? Restricting your sodium intake may lead to higher levels of circulating cortisol.

Salt is often vilified, and many physicians instruct their patients to adopt a low-sodium diet for health reasons. However, not consuming enough of it may interfere with the removal of cortisol from our bloodstream. Sodium helps flush the stress hormone from the body, and avoiding it may ultimately lead to chronically elevated blood cortisol levels. If left untreated, high cortisol levels can lead to a variety of bothersome symptoms and potentially serious complications. Most people are experiencing some symptoms of elevated or dysregulated cortisol from life stressors, and abstaining from salt may be exacerbating the situation.

What Is Cortisol?

Cortisol is an essential steroid hormone the adrenal gland produces in response to stress. It is often referred to as the stress hormone because the body releases it in higher amounts during the fight-or-flight response to a stressor. Cortisol helps release stored glucose from our cells so we have the energy to run away from a perceived threat.

The stress hormone has many vital functions, including regulating blood sugar levels, managing metabolism, controlling inflammation, and assisting with your sleep and wake cycle. It is an important hormone, however, high cortisol levels over a prolonged period of time can negatively affect health—including weight gain, high blood pressure, and weakened immune function.

The Difference Between Salt and Sodium

People often use the words salt and sodium interchangeably, but there is a marked difference between the two. Sodium is a mineral found in many foods and is essential for our bodies to function properly. Salt is a combination of sodium and chloride. It is a chemical compound comprised of 40 percent sodium and 60 percent chloride, hence its moniker. Ultimately, sodium is one of two elements that salt is made from.

Sodium is an essential mineral that helps regulate the body’s fluid balance and maintain normal nerve and muscle function. It is also involved in the absorption and transportation of nutrients throughout the body. Essential means your body cannot make it, and you must get adequate amounts from the food you eat. What is our primary source of sodium? Salt.

The Salt and Cortisol Connection

The findings of the 2020 study are not new. A separate study published earlier in the same year found that, “On a high-salt, as compared with a low-salt, diet, urinary aldosterone excretion decreased, whereas urinary cortisol and cortisone excretion increased.” In 2013, a study published in Cell Metabolism determined that “[A] high-salt diet increases cortisol excretion in humans.”

A study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism in 2003 stated, “In healthy subjects, dietary salt loading increases and sodium restriction decreases urinary free cortisol excretion” and “​​changes in cortisol metabolite excretion after salt loading were accompanied by a decrease in plasma cortisol concentration.”

Prior to that, a 1998 study concluded, “This study supports the notion that sodium restriction decreases urinary cortisol excretion.”

Although more research is needed to fully understand the relationship between salt intake and cortisol excretion, the 2020 study raises a few points. Increased dietary sodium intake may cause false positives in urinary-free cortisol excretion tests, and low-sodium diets may make cortisol blood tests inaccurate. Additionally, a low-sodium diet may raise cortisol, and incorporating high-quality sources of sodium into your diet comes with benefits in terms of cortisol regulation.

The Type of Salt Matters

When it comes to salt consumption, the type of salt matters. Table salt is the most commonly used salt. It is heavily processed and stripped of many of its natural minerals. Chemicals are often added to keep it from caking in humidity.

Table salt is also usually fortified with iodine. Iodine can be beneficial for thyroid health. However, some experts argue that the processing of table salt can make it more difficult for the body to process and use and may lead to potential health issues. Sometimes dextrose, a form of sugar, is added to table salt.

Sea salt is a more natural form of salt harvested from evaporated seawater. It retains many natural trace minerals, including magnesium, potassium, and calcium. It is not refined or processed. Himalayan pink sea salt is a popular type of salt mined from ancient salt beds in the Himalayan Mountains. It is known for its pink hue and is rich in minerals.

Kosher salt is pure sodium chloride and contains no trace minerals, iodine, or unhealthy additives.

Foods That Can Help Lower Cortisol

In addition to high-quality salt, the best foods for lowering cortisol are those that are anti-inflammatory. Any foods that lower inflammation will, in turn, lower cortisol levels. Several foods can help reduce cortisol levels in the body, including:

• Dark chocolate: Dark chocolate contains flavonoids and studies have shown it can reduce cortisol levels.
• Berries: Berries are rich in antioxidants, which can help reduce inflammation and lower cortisol levels.
• Fatty fish: Fatty fish such as salmon and tuna contain high levels of omega-3 fatty acids. Research has shown that omega-3s can reduce cortisol levels.
• Nuts: Nuts are a great source of magnesium, which can help lower cortisol levels.
• Leafy greens: Leafy greens such as spinach and kale are also rich in magnesium and antioxidants and can help reduce inflammation and lower cortisol levels.
• Fermented foods: Fermented foods, including kimchi and sauerkraut, contain probiotics. Probiotics have been shown to help reduce cortisol levels.
• Herbal teas: Research supports that herbal teas, such as chamomile and lavender, have calming properties that can help reduce cortisol levels.
• Ashwagandha: A plant that has been used for centuries in traditional Ayurvedic medicine, ashwagandha is believed to reduce cortisol levels in the body. It has treated a variety of conditions, including stress, anxiety, fatigue, and depression.

Some studies suggest that ashwagandha also has anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting properties. However, ashwagandha can be unsafe for some people and should be discussed with a physician.

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/low-sodium-diet-may-be-stressing-you-out

'Intel Insidious' - Here's All The 'Grants' Given By Biden's US CHIPS Act

 This visualization shows which companies are receiving grants from the U.S. CHIPS Act, as of April 25, 2024. The CHIPS Act is a federal statute signed into law by President Joe Biden that authorizes $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors.

The grant amounts visualized in this graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu, are intended to accelerate the production of semiconductor fabrication plants (fabs) across the United States.

Data and Company Highlights

The figures we used to create this graphic were collected from a variety of public news sources. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) also maintains a tracker for CHIPS Act recipients, though at the time of writing it does not have the latest details for Micron.

BAE Systems was not included in the graphic due to size limitations

Intel’s Massive Plans

Intel is receiving the largest share of the pie, with $8.5 billion in grants (plus an additional $11 billion in government loans). This grant accounts for 22% of the CHIPS Act’s total subsidies for chip production.

From Intel’s side, the company is expected to invest $100 billion to construct new fabs in Arizona and Ohio, while modernizing and/or expanding existing fabs in Oregon and New Mexico. Intel could also claim another $25 billion in credits through the U.S. Treasury Department’s Investment Tax Credit.

TSMC Expands its U.S. Presence

TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor foundry company, is receiving a hefty $6.6 billion to construct a new chip plant with three fabs in Arizona. The Taiwanese chipmaker is expected to invest $65 billion into the project.

The plant’s first fab will be up and running in the first half of 2025, leveraging 4 nm (nanometer) technology. According to TrendForce, the other fabs will produce chips on more advanced 3 nm and 2 nm processes.

The Latest Grant Goes to Micron

Micron, the only U.S.-based manufacturer of memory chips, is set to receive $6.1 billion in grants to support its plans of investing $50 billion through 2030. This investment will be used to construct new fabs in Idaho and New York.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/intel-insidious-heres-all-grants-given-bidens-us-chips-act

Comer Is Right to Challenge Biden’s Bureaucratic Hiring Spree

 No one other than the most partisan of cable news talking heads can make the case that the United States is better off under the presidency of Joe Biden and his disastrous policies.  Inflation is through the roof. High-interest rates have put homeownership beyond the reach of many middle-income earners.  From Ukraine to the Middle East, the world is in turmoil.  But never fear – the Biden Administration is showing extreme competence and dedication in protecting federal bureaucrats and making it easier for unqualified, far-left ideologues to procure lifetime federal jobs.  And when bureaucrats win, ordinary Americans will surely lose – and have to foot the bill. 

The United States government employs nearly three million people – more than some industries in the United States.  As a comparison, the auto industry in our country employs 1.7 million people – but auto workers produce goods and services that are useful and necessary. Most federal workers produce nothing besides paper, which is probably why they are so vociferous about defending their “rights.” 

Federal workers are governed under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, which sets out employment policies and procedures for federal agencies.  Under the guise of ensuring a “non-partisan” workforce, this law erected substantial hurdles to effective employee management, in effect making each employee immune from dismissal for poor performance (the federal government fires less than .25% of its workers each year, compared to private employers, whose involuntary termination rate is about 4.8%). Federal employees have workplace protections that private sector folks could only dream of, and those protections have paradoxically made the federal workforce more partisan, ideological, and less willing to entertain or accept ideas that go against the current narrative. And make no mistake – these unaccountable bureaucrats implement their radical policy agendas in every area of the federal government. 

During the Trump administration, efforts were made to reign in some of the more egregious examples of abuse and create accountability for senior-level federal employees. The Trump proposal, referred to by insiders as “Schedule F,” would have made a new classification of senior-level jobs directly involved in policymaking and subjected them to new rules related to job status and protections. Employees in these jobs would be treated as at-will employees, subject to removal by the President or an agency head for poor performance or lack of adherence to presidential directives.  

Naturally, this proposal generated fear and outrage amongst the bureaucrat class and their protectors in Washington, D.C., and they were quick to act.  On his second day in office, President Biden canceled the Trump executive order on Schedule F and directed the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to come up with a rule that would make it more challenging to reclassify federal workers, effectively preventing efforts by future presidents to demand accountability from the federal workforce.  

OPM wasted no time once it received these presidential marching orders. Just this past week, the agency – which essentially functions as the in-house government human resources department and is perhaps best known for the hack and breach of its network systems back in 2015 (which was then the largest government hacking ever) – finalized a rule that will essentially prevent any future efforts to make federal workers more accountable, more responsible, and more sensitive to the needs of ordinary Americans. Judging from the alacrity with which this new rule was proposed and implemented, it seems that the geniuses at OPM can move quickly and effectively when they so desire. If only the agency had the same urge to fix their cyber security issues. Nearly a decade has passed since its infamous data breach, and the agency has barely done anything to fix its cyber vulnerabilities. 

As if that’s not enough, OPM also recently issued another rule to allow federal agencies to hire unqualified interns, recent college graduates, presidential fellows, and even those without a college degree in permanent career positions without having to “compete” under federal employment rules. 

For years, OPM has been hiding its involvement in the practice of “burrowing,” which allows decisionmakers to convert political appointees – mostly far-left ideologues - into permanent government employees, and now, it’s clear that OPM is accelerating its actions on this front.  The agency is essentially saying, “we will hire who we want, circumvent competition regulations, and no one can do anything about it.”

Fortunately, these radical moves have caught the attention of some serious players in Washington. 

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer has held hearings on management failures at OPM and has hinted that a future Republican-led Congress might consider eliminating OPM, privatizing some of its functions (like benefits administration and staffing), and giving the Office of Management and Budget more insight into federal workforce policy.  

Both of Chair Comer’s proposals are serious and should be thoroughly examined. But as an absolute minimum, Congress needs to take immediate steps to ensure that OPM does not turn the federal workforce into a radical left, multi-gendered socialist pipe dream at the taxpayer’s expense.  However, as the two recent rules show, the bureaucracy isn’t going to give up without a fight.

Andrew Langer is the Director of the CPAC Foundation Center for Regulatory Freedom 

https://townhall.com/columnists/andrewlanger/2024/04/30/oversight-chair-james-comer-is-right-to-challenge-bidens-bureaucratic-hiring-spree-n2638426

California legislators advance limiting “influential” anonymous online speech

 California legislators nearly unanimously voted to limit “influential” anonymous online free speech by requiring social media companies to “seek to verify” personal information — including government-issued identification —  for “influential” accounts.

While supporters say users need help distinguishing between good and bad information, opposition warned the bill, without defining “seek to verify,” threatens anonymous online speech. 

With the bill applying to companies with at least one million annual California users, it would affect major social media companies worldwide.

Under SB 1228, by State Sen. Steve Padilla, D-Chula Vista, social media companies would be required to “seek to verify” the personal information of “influential” users, including seeking government-issued identification from “highly influential users.” Influential users who do not comply would have a “notation” on their content for two seconds showing the user is unverified showing the rest of a post, after which the notation would still be visible.

“The average person does not have convenient tools at the moment to distinguish between content produced by a reputable news source or AI generated misinformation,” said Padilla at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for the bill. “Numerous studies have shown that online anonymity results in increased unconstrained postings.” 

“Influential” users would need to submit their name, telephone number, and email address if they have 15,000 or more followers, or more than 50,000 views within a week, or rank in the top 6% of platform views within a week. “Highly influential” users would need to submit government-issued identification if they have 30,000 or more followers, or more than 100,000 views within a week, or rank in the top 3% of  views within a week. 

Bill supporters clarified the bill would not ban anonymous online speech. 

“It does not require platforms to force users to verify their identity, and it does not prevent users from using pseudonyms or no name at all when they are engaging in online speech,” said Mariko Yoshihara of the California Initiative for Technology & Democracy, to the committee. “This bill simply requires platforms to seek to verify the identity of users once they have reached a certain threshold that we have identified as influential.” 

Opposition to the bill focused on the historical American importance of anonymous speech, and the danger a lack of clarity on “seek to verify” poses, as companies that fail to “seek to verify” influential users would face lawsuits from state or local government attorneys for “injunctive or other equitable relief.” 

“It is unclear what constitutes satisfying the bill’s requirement to seek to verify influential users,” said Khara Boender of the Computer & Communications Industry Association to the committee. “These users may be speaking about sensitive topics, represent dissident opinions under oppressive regimes, or be part of a marginalized community, among other reasons. Anonymous speech is a long held value and tradition in the United States dating back to the Federalist Papers. Protecting anonymity of online speech carries forward such traditions and protections to allow for open and free expression.”

The bill moved forward to the Senate Appropriations Committee nearly unanimously, save for a lone “no” from State Sen. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks.

https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_048046aa-040e-11ef-9c1d-53f92bea1edd.html

Enduring Lawlessness in Our Cities

 Americans are worried about crime on their streets, but President Biden and the mainstream press corps don’t think that they should be. ABC News claims that “violent crime is dramatically falling.” NBC News asserts that “the drop in crime does not appear to be well understood by large majorities of Americans.” And in his State of the Union address, Biden bragged about a purported drop in crime that was allegedly a result of his efforts.

While the administration and its allies are trying to convince Americans that the crime spike that they think they’ve seen in recent years has been a mirage, the public should trust its own judgment. The best available figures, from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), show a whopping 58 percent rise in violent crime in urban areas from 2019—before the summer of George Floyd, BLM, and the “defund the police” crusade—to 2022, the most recent year for which finalized federal statistics are available.

The numbers are even worse on closer inspection. If one removes from that period the bar fights and other similar encounters that make up much of the “simple assault” category, urban areas have seen a 73 percent spike in more serious violent crimes. That’s a huge rise in violence in the nation’s cities that the media aren’t interested in acknowledging. They are also unwilling to admit that cities have retried the experiment in lax law enforcement first attempted roughly a half-century ago. The verdict is in, and once again, the results are not pretty.

Much as with inflation, however, Biden and his media allies are pushing the notion that Americans should be happy, because the worst of the spike could be in the rearview mirror. That’s a tough sell. While the recent homicide spike appears to have peaked in 2021, and the recent inflation spike in 2022, overall violent crime in urban areas and consumer prices across the nation are both noticeably worse now than they were just a few years ago.

Biden nevertheless has insisted that crime has generally been brought under control, and that his policies are to thank for it. In his State of the Union address in March, the president said, “The year before I took office, murders went up 30% nationwide.” While Biden wants to pin that huge increase on Donald Trump, the combination of policies that led to that historic homicide surge—lax prosecution, Covid lockdowns, and the stoking of race-based grievances—were clearly pushed by progressives far more than by conservatives.

Later in the speech, Biden suggested that his massive Covid stimulus package has helped reduce crime: “Now, through my American Rescue Plan, which every Republican voted against, I’ve made the largest investment in public safety ever.” In fact, less than 1 percent of the first $1.1 trillion in borrowed money disbursed under that bill went toward public safety.

Finally, Biden asserted, “Last year, the murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history, and violent crime fell to one of the lowest levels in more than 50 years.” This statement is puzzling—in fact, one wonders what Biden is talking about. The FBI statistics released last year, which report 2022 figures, don’t show a record-setting decline in murder rates. They do report that 2022’s violent-crime rate was higher than 2014’s, the year that the Ferguson, Missouri riots—and President Obama’s reaction to them—sparked the anti-policing movement.

If Biden were instead relying on preliminary FBI figures for 2023, rather than on the 2022 data released last year, that’s problematic, too—especially since he made it sound like he was using fully processed, validated, and finalized federal statistics, as one would expect from a president during a formal address to Congress. The preliminary FBI figures for 2023, which contain no reporting from 21 percent of the nation’s law enforcement agencies, haven’t been fully processed or validated. There’s a reason such figures haven’t yet been released as final.

In truth, it’s hard to compare even the FBI’s 2022 numbers with any years prior to 2021, when the FBI switched to a new reporting system. Thirty percent of the nation’s law enforcement agencies in 2021, and 17 percent in 2022, didn’t use the new reporting system and therefore weren’t included in the FBI’s stats. Among the missing agencies in 2022 were giants like the New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco police departments.

Reliable federal statistics for 2023 likely won’t be released until September, when the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) typically publishes the NCVS. Around that time, the FBI will also release its finalized statistics for 2023. Those figures won’t easily lend themselves to comparisons with the FBI’s 2019 figures, compiled under the previous reporting system, and even comparisons with 2022 and 2021 could be distorted by the different mixes of reporting agencies involved. It’s also worth noting that FBI statistics don’t include crimes not reported to police. As self-identified victims tell the NCVS, nearly 60 percent of violent crimes, and about two-thirds of property crimes, aren’t reported to the authorities.

While the preliminary FBI statistics for 2023, based on not-yet-fully processed or validated data from just 79 percent of the nation’s law enforcement agencies, aren’t yet fully baked and can’t tell us much, it’s possible to glean some knowledge of 2023 trends by comparing that year’s homicide rates in major metros with those areas’ own data from prior years. According to Police Test Info, the half-dozen largest local law enforcement agencies, based on their number of sworn officers, are the New York Police Department, the Chicago Police Department, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD), the Philadelphia Police Department, and the Houston Police Department. Five of these six agencies reported declines in homicides from 2022 to 2023, ranging from 11 percent to 20 percent. (The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department showed a 9 percent increase.) Taken in combination, the six agencies showed a 14 percent decline in homicides from 2022 to 2023.

These declines, however, are nowhere near enough to compensate for the huge murder spike from 2019 to 2022. Indeed, homicides across all six agencies rose from 2019 to 2022 by a combined 46 percent. (Unlike the FBI’s national figures, this comparison involves the same mix of agencies for the two years in question.) Even as all but one of these departments saw welcome declines in 2023, the total number of homicides within their jurisdictions still rose by large margins from 2019 to 2023—by 23 percent in New York, 23 percent in Chicago, 29 percent in Los Angeles per the LAPD (and 47 percent per the LASD, which covers the whole county), 16 percent in Philadelphia, and 29 percent in Houston. Across all six agencies combined, the number of homicides rose 25 percent from 2019 to 2023.

When BJS publishes the 2023 NCVS early this fall, it won’t be surprising if it shows a similar trend—a reduction in urban violent crime from 2022 to 2023 that doesn’t come close to negating the 58 percent increase from 2019 to 2022. But for now, the only truly reliable national statistics for making cross-year comparisons only cover through 2022. According to those numbers, America’s urban areas have collectively seen nothing but increases in violent crime since our most recent experiment in lenient law enforcement began.

This surge in urban violence, of course, comes amid the scourge in many areas of tent cities, drug addicts on streets, marijuana stench, and orchestrated shoplifting, giving the cumulative impression that great cities are abandoning civilized norms. Cities today are pursuing the opposite of “Broken Windows” policing, ignoring pettier crimes, inviting a general sense of disorderliness, and effectively encouraging more severe acts of lawlessness. This reality is not a figment of Americans’ imaginations.

Jeffrey H. Anderson is president of the American Main Street Initiative, a think tank for everyday Americans. He served as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2017 to 2021.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-urban-violent-crime-spike-is-real

American Intifada

 The American intifada unfolding on our campuses has enough foot soldiers for a pogrom, but not enough for a revolution, yet.

The campaign of intimidation and violence exploded mid-April when anti-Zionists set up an encampment on the West Lawn of Columbia University. Columbia President Minouche Shafik failed to remove them swiftly, so the activists chased the Jewish students off campus.  

In one somewhat creepy but rather hilarious incident, an anti-Zionist mob was filmed pushing Jews off the territory they stalked. Their vigilant leader Khywani James, noticing an approaching party of Hebrews, screamed, “[W]e have Zionists attempting to enter the lawn!” He quickly assembled the masses into a human chain and got them to repeat after him One step forward! One step forward! Another step forward! Another step forward! as they walked, Zombie-like, toward the intruders. The fright ended when the Jews failed to budge, politely explaining they had every right to be on that lawn. James was eventually banned from the campus for having threatened to kill Zionists.

Nevertheless, the university went on a lockdown the day after, and Professor Shai Davidai, who can be best described as the opposition leader, was not provided with security to walk to his office. Eventually, Columbia cancelled its traditional graduation ceremony.

Karl Marx once observed that revolutions are contagious. Energized by their success at Columbia, anti-Israel organizers vowed to spread their encampment colonies to other American universities. Participants marked territory with tents and terrorist signage. They took down American flags and raised Palestinian flags, reciting various genocidal and pro-terrorist chants and slogans. The alleged terrorist Hatem Abudayyeh threatened two American journalists. A Jewish woman was assaulted at Yale, as was a man in a kippah at CUNY; there were countless assaults, actually. Tai Lee of Stop Cop City, the group charged with terrorism in Georgia, called for violence against law enforcement. One thug went on a tirade about killing whitey.

How many campus agitators are students and faculty is unclear. The Neturei Karta cult pictured storming into the Fashion Institute of Technology campus are almost certainly not enrolled there. One masked USC protestor admitted she’s not a student and was attending the event in solidarity. An anti-Zionist media figurehead bragged about going to the Columbia encampment for a seder. Cops at Arizona State University said that the majority of the few dozen trespassers they’ve arrested are neither teaching nor studying there. The movement’s most high profile leader, Nerdeen Kiswani, is not a student. Encampments are set up with the assistance of trained professionals and funded through well-heeled domestic NGOs like George Soros’s Tides Foundation, and perhaps from foreign donors.

To be fair, it’s not uncommon for student movements to employ professional help or beef up their ranks with outsiders. But if 6,000 rioters turned out to claim an empty lot for People’s Park in Berkeley in 1968, the Palestine draw is comparatively modest.

On April 23, two dozen tents were observed on the steps of Sproul Hall in Berkeley. Even in the relatively apolitical nineties, Berkeley rallies easily dwarfed the current anti-Zionist hangout. Likewise, the MIT encampment was made up of just a few tents. An eyewitness reported 100 students and faculty at Northwestern getting arrested. It appears that most of the copycat tent villages are lucky to attract more than a few dozen campers.

Only a handful of universities turned out more. According to Freedomnews.tv, hundreds showed up for the anticipated Columbia standoff with law enforcement on April 23. The organizers’ statement called on “people of conscience” to join, but with all the reinforcements the movement couldn’t fill the lawn on its marquee campus.

On April 25, Kiswani urged action from people all over New York City at her event at CUNY. I’m sure people from all over NYC turned up, but, again, the crowd didn’t overflow. But two days later, hundreds of spectators assembled in Union Square to watch a man eat a jar of cheese balls.

Maybe all of these groups together can add up to 6,000 and cause some damage locally—People’s Park was a squatter druggie colony for over half a century until the university finally worked up the will to evict them. However, anti-Zionist groups appeared to have adopted the strategy of BLM and Occupy protests—they spread out. As such, their numbers are insufficient to control the country—not even BLM had the troops for that.

This is not lost on socialists who have been very tight with the Palestinian movement since its launching by the KGB in the sixties. For instance, the socialist writer Jerry White advised: “[S]tudents can’t defeat the state on their own or on the campuses. They must turn to the working class to defend their rights and defeat imperialist war.” That’s how it’s supposed to work in Marxism-Leninism, theoretically. But if the American working class can’t be bothered to free itself from its chains, they can’t be expected to free Gaza from the existence of their Jewish neighbors. Universities are the natural allies of Hamas, and they are mostly underperforming.

In response to campus disturbances, Center for Immigration Studies suggested that universities rethink foreign admissions policies. CIS noted that at Columbia, 36,649 individuals, or 55 percent of the student body, are foreign exchange. Some of the most zealous protesters appear to be from the Middle East, speak fluent Arabic, and be steeped in the regional mentality. One man was recorded instructing students about the finer aspects of martyrdom, as captured in Arabic anti-Zionist chants. Who said the Ivies are useless education?

It might just be that the Palestinian cause appears inherently unattractive to American audiences. Even when college students and faculty may reflexively support it, they are not emotionally invested. Some may attend events because they can’t say no, like the one woman who admitted she hasn’t looked into the movement’s demands, she just came out in solidarity. But most people are uninterested because they are more reflective.

It’s hard to shake off the bad impressions left by Hamas on 10/7. The charge of genocide habitually leveled at Israel breaks apart with a minimal application of critical thought. The movement of hysterical youth that hysterically charges its enemies with genocide is not a good draw.

The campus intifada is more than a problem of anti-Semitism. Sure, it’s mostly the Jewish students who get stalked and assaulted at the moment. But the real issue is not the physical violence—or even that, in the Ayatollah Khomeini’s turn of phrase, Israel is the little Satan, America is the big one. It’s the ability of the perpetrators to control the daily life of a university. Access to common areas can’t be restricted to self-appointed post-colonial revolutionaries.

There is no reason why we should import Islamic extremists to assault citizens and stage illegal occupations of university properties. One day they may have enough followers to fill up that lawn in Columbia—or enough voters to elect their desired government.

We can’t allow indoctrination of American teens either. Expulsion of a handful of particularly vicious undergrads is not enough; the entire system that propagandizes the impressionable and encourages intrusion on our rights has to go.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/american-intifada/

US Imposes Sanctions On Chinese Companies Vital To Russia's Defense Industry

 The Biden administration and US Treasury on Wednesday unveiled nearly 300 new anti-Russia sanctions which especially target third party entities which are said to help Moscow in sanctions-busting activities.

"The almost 300 targets being sanctioned by both Treasury and the Department of State include sanctions on dozens of actors that have enabled Russia to acquire desperately needed technology and equipment from abroad," the Treasury Department said in a press release.

So-called dual-use items out of China are a key focus of the action, which is being hailed as one of "the most wide-ranging actions against Chinese companies so far in Washington's sanctions aimed at Russia." 20 companies based in China and Hong Kong were named.

Companies in Turkey, Belgium, Azerbaijan, Slovakia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are also targeted.

"Treasury has consistently warned that companies will face significant consequences for providing material support for Russia’s war, and the U.S. is imposing them today on almost 300 targets," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

It also marks the furthest reaching action that seeks to specifically degrade Russia’s military-industrial base, as well as its biological and chemical weapons programs. For example, companies involved in manufacturing precursor materials for Russia to make explosives are listed.

Last week during Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to China he warned about Beijing's support for Russia's war in Ukraine. "Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support," Blinken had claimed provocatively, while also asserting China is the "top supplier" of Russia's defense industrial base - albeit not in terms of lethal aid (but instead "dual use" technologies).

This support to Russia's defense industry additionally constitutes a "medium to long-term threat that many Europeans feel viscerally that Russia poses to them," Blinken had asserted.

Meanwhile, as Ukraine forces continue getting pushed back from frontline positions by the better-armed Russian force, hawkish threats out of Congress are getting more frantic...

He warned last week that the Biden administration stood ready to introduce more sanctions against China if dual-use goods and technologies continue to be sent to Russia, including things previously identified by Washington as problematic: semiconductors, machine tools, chemical precursors, ball bearings, and optical systems. Based on Wednesday's Treasury action it is clear that the sanctions were already being prepared even as Blinken was on the three-day trip, which including a meeting with President Xi.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-imposes-sanctions-chinese-companies-vital-russias-defense-industry