WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

 So who is behind the kill-the-Jews campus protests that, as Steve noted earlier today, have panicked Congressional Democrats who fear a political debacle as in 1968? Consistent with the retro nature of the protests, the organizers appear to be largely left-wing retreads, with a financial assist, it is reported, from one or more Soros entities.

Take, for example, Charlotte Kates. Kates has been prominent in the Columbia protests:

Radical anti-Israel activists told Columbia students, “There is nothing wrong with being a fighter in Hamas” — weeks before the campus exploded in pro-Palestinian protests.

In a two-hour tirade to the hardest core of anti-Israeli activists at Columbia and its sister college, Barnard, Charlotte Kates, international coordinator of Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, said, “These [Hamas] are the people who are on the front lines defending Palestine and fighting for its liberation.”

Kates gets around. Most recently she was in Vancouver, where she praised Gaza’s October 7 massacres:

Charlotte Kates, the international coordinator for the allegedly Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-affiliated (PFLP) Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, led demonstrators in a chant proclaiming “Long live October 7.”

“We stand with the Palestinian resistance and their heroic brave action on October 7,” Kates said in her speech on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

A normal person will wonder, how can any human being be so awful? The answer: Kates is a long-time Communist:

Charlotte Kates:

* Communist
* Organizer for New Jersey Solidarity and Al-Awda
* Co-chair of National Lawyers Guild’s Middle East Subcommittee

The National Lawyers Guild is a Communist front organization that dates at least to the 1950s. Scott has had a run-in or two with them.

* Former leader of Rutgers University’s Palestine Solidarity Movement
* Believes that Israel has no right to exist
* Says that Israeli children are “legitimate” targets for Palestinian suicide bombers
* Considers the U.S. to be a racist, imperialistic nation

Which is the real point, of course. Those who profess hatred for Israel usually are using Israel as a proxy for their hatred of the United States. There is much more at the link, but I will highlight a couple of items in Kates’s resume:

She depicts the U.S. as an oppressor nation with an insatiable lust for world dominance. In one fiery speech, she condemned Israel and the United States jointly:

Our troops are Hezbollah. Our troops are the Palestinian resistance. And we do support our troops and we will struggle and we will build our resistance here until all of Palestine is free, until not one more cent of our money goes to fund genocide, until not one more U.S. bomber or U.S. soldier stands in Iraqi streets and stands in Afghan streets.

Calling the Guantanamo Bay detention center “a prison camp for the international political prisoners of the U.S.,” Kates asserts that “political imprisonment is nothing new here [in America]. There are many political prisoners, from Mumia Abu-Jamal and other veterans of the Black Liberation Movement to the Puerto Rican Liberation Movement and other struggles for social justice.”

On domestic policy, Kates wrote in 2007:

Millions of people in the United States have no health care, and costs of education have been skyrocketing increasingly out of reach for many. Youth of color in U.S. cities are put on a fast track to criminalization, targeted by often-brutal police and introduced at a young age to the world’s largest prison system. Women’s rights are increasingly under attack, while … immigrants … have been targeted for severe repression…. [T]he right to dissent is under attack, as the [Bush] administration seeks ever-increasing authority to spy on citizens … [and] attempts to sell its bankrupt policies to the people of the United States through scare tactics, racist manipulation, and repression.

This is depressingly familiar, because we have been hearing Communist drivel for a long time. The point is that the people behind the current kill-the-Jews rallies are old-timers. Charlotte Kates is just one instance, but there are many more. The current war with Israel, started by Gaza, is just one in a long series of opportunities to undermine American freedom and security, in the interest of Communism–or, if you doubt that they seriously think that a Communist takeover of the U.S. is a realistic possibility, out of sheer malice.

Saul Alinsky said it best: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/04/who-are-these-people.php

Vaccine side effects censorship drove vaccine hesitancy: nurse

 Within 20 minutes of getting his first COVID vaccine shot, Shaun Barcavage knew something was wrong. The experienced nurse practitioner felt numbness in his arm, which spread to his face. And it got worse after his second shot.

“I went from being a 100% healthy, fully functioning nurse to a complete downward spiral.”

Barcavage is one of thousands in the U.S. who have, or believe they have, suffered severe side effects from the COVID vaccines.

“It’s not a belief. It’s a fact,” he told NewsNation.

Making matters worse, Barcavage says, is a culture of denial within the health care system about just how many people have suffered from life-altering vaccine side effects.

“I thought that all my pro-vaccine colleagues … would be there to lift me up and help me. And in fact, they’re the ones who turned around, dismissed, denied and censored and buried me.”

“I think the idea that we are not listening to people who are suffering from this vaccine is awful,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, who was the White House COVID coordinator in 2022 and 2023. “We absolutely need to be listening to them.”

But he is also very clear about the benefits of the COVID vaccines: “These vaccines ended the pandemic. They saved millions of lives. Thousands of Americans were dying every day at the height of the pandemic. The vaccines totally turned it around.”

Jha, who is dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, says doctors need to take a “humble” approach to learning more about those rare but serious vaccine side effects. But he realizes that’s a big ask for many of his colleagues.

“There is a long tradition in medicine that when we as doctors don’t understand something, we actually blame the patient. This has been a problem in medicine forever.”

Barcavage says he learned that first-hand when friends refused to believe his serious illness was related to the COVID vaccine.

“They’re afraid that, by showing my face, I’ll drive vaccine hesitancy. What I have come to realize is that the censorship and the hiding of it is actually fueling vaccine hesitancy.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says more than 270 million Americans, or 81% of the population, have been vaccinated. Of those, less than 2% reported severe or life-threatening issues.

Every vaccine produces side effects. The CDC has reported cases of anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction, in just over 11 cases for every one million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and two and a half cases per million doses of the Moderna vaccine.

Other serious illnesses linked to vaccines in very rare instances include Guillain-Barré Syndrome (muscle weakness and paralysis), myocarditis and pericarditis (heart muscle inflammation), and thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (blood clots in large blood vessels).

Many have applied for federal help, to little avail. The Health Resources and Services Administration is the agency charged with compensating people with injuries directly linked to “a covered countermeasure” such as a vaccine.

The HRSA says, as of April 1, it received 13,116 COVID-related claims. So far, it’s reviewed more than 10,000 of those claims and found just 47 eligible for compensation, which averages about $3,600. The rest were denied.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/cuomo-show/vaccine-side-effects-censorship-drove-vaccine-hesitancy-nurse/

IT DIDN’T START IN COLLEGE

 Many Americans have been shocked at the spectacle of thousands of college students, along with thousands more non-college students, engaging in kill-the-Jews riots. These people are demonstrating in favor of Hamas, which means in favor of gang rape and mass murder. How could this possibly have happened?

I have seen suggestions that left-wing professors have led students astray, and no doubt that is true. We have seen many professors participating in these pro-mass murder rallies. But I think that explanation misses a more fundamental point: hating Israel and, more important, hating the United States, has been built into the curriculum of many, perhaps most, public K-12 schools.

al Qaeda’s ideology focused hatred on two countries: America, the Great Satan, and Israel, the Little Satan. al Qaeda’s philosophy has now been adopted by American liberals and is being taught in our public schools. Liberals tell children that the great evil of world history is “settler colonialism.” But it turns out that, despite millennia of peoples migrating and invading, there are actually only two instances of “settler colonialism”–the United States and Israel. The Great Satan and the Little Satan. This is the nonsense with which our children’s minds are being poisoned, long before they go to college.

My colleague Kathy Kersten wrote about this in the context of Minnesota’s new Social Studies standards, which my organization has been battling against for more than three years:

Minnesotans will likely be surprised and disturbed to learn that our state’s new K-12 social studies standards are littered with these buzzwords [“decolonization,” “settler-colonialism,” “dispossession” and “resistance”], which are at the heart of “decolonization” ideology.

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) has portrayed the standards — which were formally adopted in January 2024 after a four-year process — as unifying. In reality, they will divide our young people by group identity, teach them to view social life as a zero-sum power struggle between oppressors (bad) and victims (good), and convert public schools into boot camps for political activism.

In the new standards, the connection between “decolonization” ideology and Israel is made explicit in the examples that, according to [the Minnesota Department of Education], “clarify the meaning” of the grade-level benchmarks. MDE has not made these examples public, indicating it will provide them separately to explain how schools should implement the standards. However, Center of the American Experiment obtained the examples, which appeared in MDE’s September 2021 working draft, through a public data request.

In connection with one standard, for instance, students are instructed to “describe how individuals and communities have fought” for “liberation against systemic and coordinated exercises of power.” In another, they must “analyze the impact of colonialism” and in a third, they must “analyze dominant and non-dominant narratives.” In all three cases, Israel-Palestine is highlighted as an example. Likewise, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar is held up as an immigrant who has made “contributions” to “political ideas.”

For what it is worth, Jews have been in the Holy Land for more than 2,000 years longer than Arabs, so I am not sure who is the “settler” here.

Kersten goes on to explain who wrote the current Social Studies standards:

“Ethnic Studies explores the colonial roots of the dispossession of Palestinian land and the creation of Zionism,” wrote Lozenski in 2022 in a Convergence magazine article he co-authored with pro-Palestinian activists like Lara Kiswani, who directs the extremist California-based Arab Resource and Organizing Center. “Given the devastating impact of Israeli colonialism,” “studying Israeli settler colonialism in comparison to U.S. settler colonialism” is “at the heart of the discipline of Ethnic Studies.”

Minnesota’s legislature has decreed that all classes–geometry, for instance–must include an Ethnic Studies component. These people are the ones the state is relying on to supply the content of that component.

“But even the suggestion that Palestine might be mentioned is enough to bring forth well-funded organized attacks from pro-Israeli lobby groups,” the authors continued. They denounced, by name, “Islamophobic and Zionist organizations” like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The people Kathy is quoting here are not just irrelevant quacks. On the contrary:

Brian Lozenski served as chief testifier for HF 1502. Its sponsor was Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura, whom the Twin Cities-Democratic Socialists of America endorsed in 2022. This party’s sympathies are well known. On Oct. 9, 2023, its leaders issued a statement blaming the Hamas invasion on Israel, condemning Israel’s alleged “settler-colonial violence and dispossession,” and vowing to “fight border fascism wherever it rears its hideous head.”

There is much more at the link, but I will close with this:

EdLib MN’s message included a link to an organizing tool kit for students from the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, whose director co-authored Brian Lozenski’s Convergence article. The tool kit laid out a step-by-step guide, along with timetables, media talking points, and templates for protest signs and chants. One sign reads, “Decolonize Palestine,” and features a masked woman hurling a rock, with a burning police car behind it.

This from the group that describes itself, accurately, as the driving force behind Minnesota’s legally mandated curricula. Here, as in so many other areas, Minnesota may be below average, but it isn’t unique. Across the country, elementary, middle school and high school children are being indoctrinated in this anti-American, anti-Israel ideology. Osama bin Laden would be proud. He failed in the military arena, but American liberals have taken up his ideas and are teaching them to American school children. By the time they get to college, kids who have been poisoned by this ideology see nothing odd about rioting for murder and rape, as long as those being murdered and raped are “settler-colonialist” Jews.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/05/it-didnt-start-in-college.php

STOP THE CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!

 “Lucretia,” our “International Woman of Mystery” on the 3WHH podcast, is not our only academic friend who needs to proceed pseudonymously from time to time so as to avoid a struggle session with our sub-moronic college administrator class. A loyal Power Line reader of some academic prominence who goes by the name “Norm D. Ploom” sends along the following query about yet another double-standard in play in the current campus scene:

I am troubled by what seems like serious, repeated, and unreported cases of cultural appropriation:

Caucasian students are wearing Palestinian Keffiyehs.

This appropriation is happening on many campuses, but it has not received the attention it deserves.

True, they are wearing it out of solidarity with those who hate Israel, but my understanding is that even good intentions like these are not an element of this cultural crime. They certainly are not a “get out of jail” free card for students in other instances of cultural appropriation. In those cases, their intention is usually to have fun at a party. But that is not considered a sufficient excuse on many campuses.

And what about consequences? Normally, the “appropriation” of other students’ cultures lead to consequences at universities where sensitivity reigns in the dean of students office (they/them). That usually means students accused of cultural appropriation are told to sit with counselors from that office, who give them “voluntary” instruction about cultural sensitivity. 

Our campus is better than most, though some students wish it were not so. A few years ago, I was present at an Israel-birthday celebration in the open area between the [Name Redacted] Library and [Name Redacted] Gymnasium. The Jewish students served falafel sandwiches with hummus for free. They also had a small stuffed camel beside the table. The Palestinian students and their political allies repeatedly yelled at high volume that the sandwiches and the stuffed animal were unacceptable “cultural appropriation.” It did no good to tell them both were commonplace in Israel itself. The only good news is that the Jewish students were not required to meet with counselors for remedial cultural instruction. As far as I know, none were sent to the rice paddies to learn from the “glorious peasants.”

Personally, I oppose these limits on freedom of speech.

But I also support the even-handed application of the rules on every college campus. That includes the rules on cultural appropriation. I don’t think that is being done on any campus. Administrators should not have the discretion to impose these rules for appropriation when they don’t like its political meaning and ignore it for appropriation when they support different political stances.

If students can engage in this kind of cultural appropriation without consequences, I fear it could easily lead to rock-n-roll based on rhythm-and-blues and fast-food restaurants that serve tacos. Where does it stop?

Reminder:

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/05/stop-the-cultural-appropriation.php

Gaza Pier Delayed Over Rough Seas, Pentagon Calls Project "Extremely Challenging"

 This week has seen statements and reports indicating the US military constructed humanitarian pier on Gaza's coast is expected to be complete by some point this weekend. 

But the $320 million project has hit another snag, as the Pentagon has said its soldiers and engineers were forced to "temporarily pause" the offshore assembly of the floating pier due to bad sea conditions in the eastern Mediterranean. So a finish date by this weekend appears unrealistic at this point, based on the Friday announcement.

US Navy personnel construct a ‘Joint Logistics Over-the Shore’ temporary pier. Image: CENTCOM via Reuters

"The partially built pier and military vessels involved in its construction have moved to the Port of Ashdod, where assembly will continue, and will be completed prior to the emplacement of the pier in its intended location when sea states subside," CENTCOM said in a statement. 

So now the US personnel constructing it have moved to Israel. Presumably once the floating pier is completed it will be moved by sea back to the northern Gaza coast in preparation for maritime aid deliveries. 

The pier is expected to allow “the delivery of large quantities of humanitarian aid from ship to shore by truck, with vehicles driving directly off ships and across the temporary pier to a marshaling yard ashore," per the US military statement.

According to more details of what could prove to be cause of more continued pauses and delays:

Defense officials previously hoped that the JLOTS system would be fully built by Friday. But officials told CNN that sea state conditions have been extremely challenging off the coast of Gaza over the last week, impeding the work of the personnel involved in building the pier. One of the key tasks, for example, involves military divers working underneath the pier to ensure all the parts are secured and stable — a difficult and dangerous task when the seas are rough.

The operation of the pier and causeway, which will also require US military personnel to be stationed at sea, will also depend on weather conditions, officials say. 

Meanwhile famine has hit parts of the Gaza Strip, USAID said starting last month. There are also still lingering fears that once complete the pier and personnel working it could come under attack by Palestinian militants.

On Tuesday Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made a surprise admission for the first time. It came during a hearing of the House Armed Services committee, and specifically when Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida grilled him on whether US servicemen will be placed in harm's way during the construction of the project in Gaza.

Austin answered in the affirmative, and further said that troops erecting the pier will be armed and that they will be authorized to fire back if fired upon. It must be recalled that just last week a visiting delegation of UN officials came under mortar fire from Palestinian militants. Hamas has further warned that any foreign military presence on Gaza soil will come under attack. 

* * *

Below is more from the tense Congressional exchange: 

Gaetz: This is a very telling moment, Mr. Secretary, because you've said something that's quite possible, that could happen, right? Shots from Gaza on our service members, and then the response our armed service members shooting live fire into Gaza. That is a possible outcome here so that we can become the Port Authority and run this pier. Right?

Austin: That's correct. And I expect that we will always have the ability to protect themselves.

Gaetz: Don't you think that counts as boots on the ground? President Biden told the country that we weren't going to have boots on the ground in Gaza.

Austin: And we won't

Gaetz: Okay, but you guys parse the distinction between... Like when Americans think boots on the ground, they think Americans in harm's way or engaged actively in a conflict. You guys seem to be sort of saying that boots on a pier, connected to the ground, connected to service members shooting into Gaza doesn't count as boots on the ground?

Austin: It does not.

Gaetz: I think you're gonna find the the American people have a different perspective on that. And if we're gonna have people shooting into Gaza, we probably should have a vote on that, pursuant to our war powers.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/gaza-pier-delayed-over-rough-seas-pentagon-calls-project-extremely-challenging

Long Beach Hotel Housing 'Homeless' Sparks TB Outbreak As Health Emergency Declared

 A health crisis has emerged for Democrat officials in Long Beach, California, following a tuberculosis outbreak linked to a hotel housing 'homeless' people, according to Fox News. 

On Thursday, health officials declared a public health emergency after an alarming tuberculosis outbreak was reported at an unnamed hotel housing. 

The city has so far confirmed 14 cases of tuberculosis in people "associated with a single room occupancy hotel." Nine of them were hospitalized with one fatal case. Another 170 people were "likely exposed" to the deadly bacteria. 

"The outbreak is currently isolated to a distinct population and the risk to the general public is low," the city said, adding, "The population at risk in this outbreak has significant barriers to care, including homelessness and housing insecurity, mental illness, substance use and serious medical comorbidities."

The reason health officials declined to name the hotel or its location is to comply with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act regulations. 

One X user said, "I believe the name of the hotel SHOULD BE DISCLOSED in the interest of traveler safety. OR does this mean the hotel is used to house illegal aliens invading our border? Long Beach declares public health emergency after deadly tuberculosis outbreak." 

The question now becomes if Long Beach officials were housing illegal migrants in the hotel... 

If so, this isn't the first time unvaccinated and undocumented illegal aliens have sparked infectious disease outbreaks in hotels and shelters nationwide. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/long-beach-hotel-housing-homeless-sparks-tuberculosis-outbreak-officials-declare-health

'Alzheimer's Biomarkers Linked With Plasma Leptin Levels'

Key Takeaways

• Plasma leptin levels were linked with Alzheimer's disease PET pathology in cognitively unimpaired older adults in Korea.
• Lower baseline leptin was associated with a greater increase in tau over 2 years, while leptin and beta-amyloid showed a cross-sectional association.
• While mechanistic pathways are unknown, leptin may be protective against Alzheimer's pathology, the researchers suggested.

Plasma leptin levels were linked with Alzheimer's disease PET pathology in cognitively unimpaired older adults, a longitudinal cohort study in Korea showed.

Over 2 years, lower baseline plasma leptin was associated with a greater increase in regional tau (β = −0.06, 95% CI −0.11 to −0.01, P=0.03), reported Dong Young Lee, MD, PhD, of the Seoul National University College of Medicine.

At baseline, leptin and tau were not linked, but leptin and amyloid-beta were. In a cross-sectional analysis, lower leptin levels were tied to greater amyloid pathology (β = −0.04, 95% CI −0.09 to 0.00, P=0.046), the researchers reported in JAMA Network Openopens in a new tab or window.

Epidemiologic studies have suggested that low plasma leptin levels in late life are associated with increased risk of Alzheimer's dementia and cognitive decline. An earlier cross-sectional analysisopens in a new tab or window tied plasma leptin to cerebrospinal fluid amyloid and Alzheimer's diagnoses.

The present study is the first to show links between leptin and both amyloid and tau in humans using longitudinal and cross-sectional approaches, Lee and co-authors noted.

The mechanistic pathway linking leptin and Alzheimer's-related cognitive decline is unknown, but the "findings suggest that plasma leptin may be protective for the development or progression of Alzheimer's disease pathology, including both amyloid-beta and tau deposition," they wrote.

Lee and colleagues assessed 208 cognitively unimpaired people who had baseline amyloid PET scans; of these, 192 completed both baseline and 2-year follow-up amyloid PET scans from 2014 through 2020. Mean baseline age was 66 years, 54.8% were women, and 17.8% were APOE4 carriers.

"We included only cognitively unimpaired individuals to exclude the possibility that the cognitively impaired state itself is associated with plasma leptin (i.e., reverse causality) and to focus on the association of leptin with Alzheimer's disease pathology," the researchers noted. "The cognitively impaired state can cause reduced olfactory function and appetite, inadequate nutrition, and weight loss, all of which can be associated with leptin levels."

Participants came from the Korean Brain Aging Study for Early Diagnosis and Prediction of Alzheimer Disease. At baseline, plasma leptin was measured with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.

A subgroup of 76 participants had an initial 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose AV-1451 tau PET scan; of these, 43 had the same tau PET scan 2 years later. The initial tau PET scan occurred approximately 2.5 years after leptin measurement at baseline.

The researchers found no association between baseline plasma leptin levels and regional tau (β = −0.02, 95% CI −0.05 to 0.02, P=0.41). Neither did they find a longitudinal relationship between plasma leptin and amyloid-beta changes over the 2-year follow-up period (β = 0.006, 95% CI 0.00-0.02, P=0.27).

"Such a null longitudinal result may be due to the relatively short follow-up period," Lee and co-authors suggested. "Given that amyloid-beta accumulation in the brain is a very gradual process, a 2-year follow-up period might be too short to reveal an association of leptin with amyloid-beta change."

The null finding of a relationship with tau at baseline may be due to the cognitively intact state of the study participants, when the level of tau deposition is very low in the neocortex, they added.

The study has several limitations, Lee and co-authors acknowledged. Leptin was measured in plasma, which may not perfectly reflect its cerebral concentration. In addition, only 43 people completed the second tau PET scan.

"Nevertheless, given that we still found a significant association between leptin and changes in tau deposition, a smaller sample size may not necessarily be a critical concern," they wrote.

Disclosures

This study was supported by the Korean Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology and the Ministry of Health & Welfare, the Seoul National University Hospital, and the National Institute on Aging.

The authors had no disclosures.

Primary Source

JAMA Network Open

Source Reference: opens in a new tab or windowLee S, et al "Plasma leptin and Alzheimer protein pathologies among older adults" JAMA Netw Open 2024; DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.9539.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/neurology/alzheimersdisease/109964