Welcome to The Now

 Ukraine is running out of able bodies, and some of the ones there are done fighting. Rachel Blevins and Mark Sleboda discuss:

  Shades of 1968 :  Protesters at Columbia University broke windows at the Manhattan campus’ Hamilton Hall early Tuesday, hours after the school began suspending students who defied a deadline to leave a pro-Palestinian camp set up to protest the war in Gaza. NBC News could not confirm how many people were inside Hamilton Hall, but the university’s student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, reported that dozens of protesters had occupied the building. “Let’s finish what they did in 1968,” someone yelled, apparently referring to the famous protest against the Vietnam War in which the same building was occupied. "Disclose, divest. We will not stop, we will not rest," people were heard chanting. An NYPD spokesperson said that "we are outside the campus, not on the grounds" just before 2 a.m. Apparently the White House is condemning the fact that a group is occupying property that supposedly belongs to someone else, which is both ironic and tone-deaf.  Also, let's n...

 Feels eerily like how Starbucks fires employees who try to unionize:

We can now, finally , l ay the myths of "anyone can make it" and "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" to rest :  A millionaire who deliberately made himself broke and homeless in a bizarre social experiment designed to rack up YouTube hits has suddenly quit his challenge after concerns over his health.  Mike Black had planned to essentially start over from nothing, while proving to himself that he would be able to make $1 million in the space of just 12 months. Black had been an entrepreneur his entire life, but in July 2020 decided to walk away from everything giving up his car, house and all of his money.  'I knew a lot of people who lost everything during the pandemic and they got really depressed. I even had a friend that lost a $10 million business overnight', Black explained in a YouTube video. Black wanted to help his friends rebuild their lives and prove that luck or money was not necessary to become a millionaire - just hard work.  But Black en...

 I'll admit my bias up front: on at least three different occasions, I've been to a KFC and was told, "We're currently out of chicken." So to see this put a slight smile on my face: In Algeria, the first KFC store to open in the country closed two days after its opening amid a nationwide backlash against the chain food store, which is included in the pro-Palestine boycotting list. On Sunday, 16 April, a branch of KFC opened in the Algiers suburb of Dely Ibrahim, marking the first location of the US chain in the North African country. However, many Algerians quickly made it clear that the store was not welcome in their country, mainly due to its alleged support for Israel. It's spreading... just ask Malaysia : American fast-food chain, KFC, has shut more than 100 units, as US businesses around the world face battering over Palestine, Anadolu Agency reports. The KFC had to reduce its operations across Malaysia, mostly in north-eastern Kelantan state, following ...

 In other words: you need troops, which Ukraine is in short supply of. 

 Branded a gang leader and in the FBI's " Ten Most Wanted " Innocent shows CNN reporters a side not many would expect for someone with his reputation. Then again, Haiti's not being attacked by an enemy of the United States, so perspectives can vary.

 They've both been out of the country, but it doesn't mean they aren't keeping an eye on things:

 Umm Fahad was one of many online celebrities targeted for “the crime of producing and publishing several films and videos containing obscene and indecent language, violating public decency and morals.”

 Well...

 

 

 There is an explosion of college protesters being arrested for being on the side of Palestinians, including Emerson College , USC , Columbia University , Yale and NYC .  Friendly reminder that connections exist: the covert / overt pushback against protests , the creation of Cop Cities nationwide , the hypocritical ban on TikTok ...all related to maintaining control of the narrative and the people that the narrative is directed to.  And just to show that I'm not alone, here's Rachel Blevins and Sabrina Salvati hitting some of the same points: And here's Lee Camp's coverage:

 

 When someone from an oppressed, disenfranchised or maligned group conducts themselves as a typical colonial-friendly, capitalism-obsessed WASP (guess we have to add and extra "S" for "Straight") all we've done is perform cosmetic surgery on the status quo:

 

 Well, a number of things, as this CNN story notes . Among them: China has the ability block any sale, which is likely considering that the purpose the US law is to force a Chinese company sell to an American buyer.  The owner of the company vows to fight through legal means. Even if the sale were to happen, China could remove the algorithm from the app, basically making it useless.  First Amendment experts doubt this law will hold up in court. The one thing the CNN story doesn't really cover is the " why ." Well, this app that was created and governed by another country; as such the leaders of America cannot control what is being said or done on the app. This means that (mostly young) Americans who use it can criticize America (within reason; Lee Camp apparently was banned). Compare this to when Americans (including Lee Camp) were on RT America, a Russian-backed news network that allowed Americans to critique the American government...not to mention its allies. TikTok al...

 

 Here's one (very good) take:

 Danny Haiphong thinks so, and he shares some things with Margaret Kimberley . 

  Seriously; this guy would have made the CIA proud. 

 Chris Hedges and Vincent Bevins discuss:

 If flights leaving the Promised Land begin to pick up, you'll know why :  Nearly three-quarters of the Israeli public oppose a retaliatory strike on Iran for its massive missile attack on the country if such action would harm Israel’s security alliance with its allies, according to a poll published Tuesday. The Hebrew University survey also found that over half the public believes Israel “respond[s] positively” to the military and political demands of allies. Israel has vowed to retaliate after Iran overnight Saturday fired over 300 missiles and drones at the country. Almost all were intercepted before they reached the country as the United States led a coordinated air defense shield that involved Israeli, American, British, French and Jordanian forces, reportedly along with radar and intelligence input from some Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia. Maybe they should concentrate of getting back the hostages . For what it's worth, Iran is putting out a warning . 

 Prof Wolff discusses this with union member Kim Kelly:

  So much for "do no evil":  Google has fired more than two dozen employees who protested this week against the company’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government. The workers were dismissed after an investigation found that they had staged protests inside Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. In Sunnyvale, they entered the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, according to a post on X by the group that organized the demonstration, No Tech For Apartheid. Protesters held banners that read “No More Genocide For Profit” and “We Stand with Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Googlers.” A Google spokesperson told CNN Thursday that the protests “were part of a long-standing campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely don’t work” at the company. “A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a few of our locations. Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation...

 

 First if all, Iran's attack was not unprovoked: Second: The impact of Iran's attack has been misinterpreted by the American/Western media: Third: The reason Israel wants to rattle Iran's cage is because they failed their Gaza operation: In short: Israel did this to themselves, and their leader would rather start WWIII than embrace peace or admit defeat. 

 Does it matter if it is " a participant, counter-protester or random yahoo ?" Nope! Due Dissidence has more:

  Notice he talks about "the scale;" a lot of publications have used "unprecedented" to describe Iran's retaliatory attack.

 The newspaper that went after Harvey Weinstein crumbles in the face of AIPAC and Benjamin Netanyahu: THE NEW YORK TIMES instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees. The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “offers guidance about some terms and other issues we have grappled w...

 Did you know that Iran was willing not to send any drones/rockets if Israel had stopped the Gaza genocide?

 Jimmy Dore and Scott Ritter discuss: Long Story = Short: Israel needs to make peace. Also, if the US wants to "win" any military conflicts going forward, nuclear options would need to be on the table...and that's pretty much the endgame.

 In regards to Iran's attack:

 

 

 While most talk about Iran's recent retaliatory strike on Israel or the continuing fright between the IDF and Hamas, the West Bank is having their own problems : Hundreds of Israeli settlers surrounded Palestinian villages and attacked residents across the occupied West Bank, eyewitnesses told CNN, after an Israeli boy who had gone missing from a settlement was found dead. The body of Binyamin Achimair, 14, was found in the area of Malachei Ha’Shalom, with the Israeli military saying he was killed in a “terrorist attack.” It is unclear yet what was the cause of death, and the IDF is yet to provide evidence that this was a “terrorist attack.” CNN has reached out for clarity. Soon after, videos obtained by CNN show settlers setting houses and cars ablaze in the village of Duma, southeast of Nablus. Footage shows heavy smoke engulfing the air, as settlers fire gunshots in the area. Eyewitnesses said settlers stormed people’s houses, resulting in clashes with Palestinians. In one vid...

 

  The biggest reason Africa is "poor" is because the rich continue to exploit the continent's resources.

 George Galloway asks Chris Hedges:

 

  Via C-SPAN .

 Well, now you do:

 The athlete-turned celebrity-turned controversial figure (as well as a classic case study on the dynamics of race, class and the legal system) has passed at 76 . 

  Sadly even the media doesn't want to admit that genocide is happening, in part because certain countries haven't defined it. So it's up to the courts. 

  It takes a lot of stones to lecture a country that your country had colonized on environmentalism. 

  Like Keaton said, when you're channel revolves around electoral politics, this is what you wind up doing. With their audience, The Young Turks should be telling people to hit the streets over every issue they feel passionate about instead of putting all their hopes in phantom candidates (or real ones that are deeply flawed). 

  Very telling : President Joe Biden won the state’s Democratic presidential primary earlier this week, obtaining 84% of the roughly 65,500 total votes, according to tallies from the secretary of the state’s office. No other candidate managed to get even 3% of the vote. But about 11.6% of Democratic voters cast a ballot for “uncommitted,” a higher share than in 2020 and 2016. The uncommitted vote was seen as a way to protest Biden’s support for Israel after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and Israel’s invasion of Gaza. “They’re wasting their vote, and they are wasting my time,” Lamont said. “The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who stay neutral or can’t make up their minds at a time of moral crisis.” The uncommitted vote varied by town. In seven towns, more than 20% of voters choose uncommitted, although some of these towns didn’t exceed 300 votes across all candidates.

 

 A follow-up of sorts to this previous post .

 Audio can be found here .

  My humble take? There are, generally-speaking, three factions in the leadership of the West (aka, NATO, US, Canada...): Stuck In The Past; Blind to the Present : These people still believe it's like the "glory days" where the West did what they wanted, mostly led by the United States. These leaders still believe that their countries have the best military, best economy and best moral standing. Sadly, this belief also makes them think that they can easily defeat China, Russia and/Iran in conventionally military combat. True Believers : They see the world in black & white, where the West is Good and Everyone Else is Evil. For them, the moral standing mentioned above carries more weight than everything else, and any "flaws" pointed out is negligible. " Ukraine has Nazis? " " Russia is worse. " " Israel is indiscriminately bombing and purposefully starving a group of people trapped in an open-air prison in genocidal fashion? " ...

 “This is not anymore about the seven men and women of World Central Kitchen that perished on this unfortunate event. This is happening for way too long. It’s been six months of targeting anything that seems moves. This doesn’t seem a war against terror. This doesn’t seem anymore a war about defending Israel. This really, at this point, seems it’s a war against humanity itself.” - José Andrés, founder of the World Central Kitchen (WCK) after seven members ( including Jacob Flickinger ) were killed in a Israeli military strike. 

 

 Yemen is basically controlling the Red Sea: And between Iran and Hezbollah, everything else of strategic value is being hit:

 This is big, mostly because it's unprecedented: Why did Ecuador do this? Well, it may have to do with the former Ecuadoran Vice President (Jorge Glas). 

 

 Hint: it's those who aren't about Haitian independence: FYI: For what it' worth here's a 2022/2023 video about the richest people in Haiti:

 

 

 It might be hard for some to believe that at one point, GE had commercials all over the place and had owned NBC. But that was another time : GE once did almost everything for the typical American family – from providing much of the television they watched, to the light bulbs and appliances they depended upon, the electricity needed to power those household staples, even the subprime mortgage that allowed many of them to buy their homes. No longer. With Tuesday’s split into two companies, the break up of the once mighty industrial icon is complete. The company was founded by Thomas Edison in 1892 and built into the world’s largest and most valuable company by the once legendary, but now oft-criticized CEO Jack Welch. But, during this century, the company became a struggling, bloated conglomerate, weighed down by poorly timed deals that left it with unaffordable levels of debt. But instead of dealing with that debt and fixing its myriad problems, it spent tens of billions on share r...

 Strategy/long-term planning is key:

 Antony Blinken certainly believes so .

 This break in disturbing news is brought to you via CNN .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Via Katie Halper:

  Well put. TV/Radio/Internet Personalities are not ideal movement leaders, because they have to juggle their brand/business/livelihood (read: the MONEY) with the prospect of working every day to make the lives of those who are disenfranchised, oppressed, and/or discriminated better.  Activists don't really have time to put on shows because, they are, well, working on activism.  And let's be honest: most of the "revolutionary" talk in any media is described through a prism of electoral politics anyway. 

 Lee Camp talks about it (and explains why the mainstream media is not talking about it):

 RBN gives their take: I would add/expand that the "failing generation" here is not only blaming social media (specifically Tik Tok) but they are blaming younger generations as a whole. 

 Looking at the connections between all the global conflicts, it's hard not to think so: Remember this boils down to ego, power and money. The United States (and the West as a whole) can't contemplate a world where the US isn't top dog economically, politically and militarily, and are willing to kill, steal and destroy to maintain its standing. 

 According to CNN, Iran seems to think so .