Modern day systemic racism, does it exist?

[Landon Caeli]

It was an odd choice of words.

Racist and savage are synonymous in your mind?




Well ok....you're entitled to your opinion.

To me....a guy doing 40 to life for beating his child to death is a savage. A guy who murdered an old lady for 50$ is a savage.

A guy making broad based assumptions about people off of perceived physical characteristics is probably just ignorant.

I don't know. I probably made a mistake by posting here. Please carry on without me.

 

[RDKirk]

After all, how dumb do you have to be to not realize that your university has absolutely no ability to end a foreign war? Are they smoking crack between classes? Sniffing paint thinner?

Dumbest generation of college students in quite some time.

Their intent is to force their universities to divest from any financial contact with anything Israeli. That's technically difficult to do, but in addition, it would mean giving up all financial contacts with any American Jewish interests as well.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Their intent is to force their universities to divest from any financial contact with anything Israeli.

Is there some abundance of Israeli work being outsourced by the universities?

That's technically difficult to do, but in addition, it would mean giving up all financial contacts with any American Jewish interests as well.

I don't see that as the case....but hey, what do I know. If American Jews are being targeted....these are antisemitic protests....and not conducive to a learning environment.

 

[RDKirk]

I don't see that as the case....but hey, what do I know. If American Jews are being targeted....these are antisemitic protests....and not conducive to a learning environment.

American Jewish interests aren't going to take divestiture from Israeli financial interests lying down.

Easier just to let those students go to some other university.

 

[Ana the Ist]

American Jewish interests aren't going to take divestiture from Israeli financial interests lying down.

I don't know how many are zionists.

Easier just to let those students go to some other university.

That's pretty messed up. College is for learning, not protesting, and if you can't do it without terrorizing other students....you don't really need to be there.

 

[Ana the Ist]

American Jewish interests aren't going to take divestiture from Israeli financial interests lying down.

Easier just to let those students go to some other university.

If you ask me....the real problem is here.

https://www.jns.org/us-department-of-education-is-concealing-foreign-donations-to-universities/

According to a forthcoming update to AICE’s report, “[COLOR=var(--color-primary)]Arab Funding of American Universities: Donors, Recipients and Impact[/COLOR],” and the latest DoE report (from 1981 through Oct. 13, 2023), four Arab nations—Qatar ($5.7 billion), Saudi Arabia ($3.3 billion), the UAE ($1.4 billion) and Kuwait ($1.3 billion)—accounted for 23% ($11.7 billion) of all donations ($51 billion) to higher education and 94% of the $12.5 billion donated by 14 Arab states and the Palestinian Authority. No information is provided, however, of how 73% (more than $9.5 billion) of these donations were allocated. Most of the others are attributed to financial assistance for students from their countries.

 

[Pommer]

Their intent is to force their universities to divest from any financial contact with anything Israeli. That's technically difficult to do, but in addition, it would mean giving up all financial contacts with any American Jewish interests as well.

My emphasis.
American Jewish interests fund a goodly portion of their throughput, this won’t happen.

 

[RDKirk]

I don't know how many are zionists.

Jewish donors to a university don't have to be flat-out Zionists to take umbrage at that university's divestiture from any connection to Israel.

 

[RDKirk]

If you ask me....the real problem is here.

https://www.jns.org/us-department-of-education-is-concealing-foreign-donations-to-universities/

According to a forthcoming update to AICE’s report, “[COLOR=var(--color-primary)]Arab Funding of American Universities: Donors, Recipients and Impact[/COLOR],” and the latest DoE report (from 1981 through Oct. 13, 2023), four Arab nations—Qatar ($5.7 billion), Saudi Arabia ($3.3 billion), the UAE ($1.4 billion) and Kuwait ($1.3 billion)—accounted for 23% ($11.7 billion) of all donations ($51 billion) to higher education and 94% of the $12.5 billion donated by 14 Arab states and the Palestinian Authority. No information is provided, however, of how 73% (more than $9.5 billion) of these donations were allocated. Most of the others are attributed to financial assistance for students from their countries.

That's an interesting article. I think I see your point. I also see that with the government so shoddy about validating this information, it makes it relatively easy for either side to cherry-pick data without a reliable way for their claims to be validated.

Also, this passage was interesting in a couple of different ways:

The lack of transparency impedes efforts to ascertain the role of foreign funding in fostering antisemitism on campuses. One reason to doubt its impact is that outside of Middle East Studies, some of the most vitriolic critics of Israel are in the humanities and social science departments, like gender studies, which are not known for attracting Arab funding. Those faculty don’t need foreign money to shape their views, which are rooted in the ideology of the oppressed and intersectionality, and view Arab governments (but not the Palestinian Authority or Hamas) with contempt.

Also, Arab funders are primarily interested in advancing their national interests, improving their image, influencing U.S. policy and educating their citizens to advance their economies (hence the large amounts of money to cover tuition and expenses). Fostering hostility towards Jews or Israel may undermine those interests.

Qatar has gone out of its way to cultivate relations with Jews in the antisemitic belief that Jews have the power to sway the U.S. government in their favor. Similarly, the Saudis are discussing normalization with Israel and want Americans to forget the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi (44% of their donations were made after his death).

I have noted that the only nation in the region that has expressed official support for the 2-state solution is Saudi Arabia (that is to say, the Saudi foreign minister has gone on public record supporting it).

 

[Ana the Ist]

That's an interesting article. I think I see your point. I also see that with the government so shoddy about validating this information, it makes it relatively easy for either side to cherry-pick data without a reliable way for their claims to be validated.

Given the outrageous tuition rates, record low number of tenured professors per student, and unnecessary or superfluous faculty....one does wonder exactly what that billions are for?

The universities need a complete audit and significant financial transparency. These aren't organizations created for wealth and profits....though it appears that's what they've become.

Also, this passage was interesting in a couple of different ways:


I have noted that the only nation in the region that has expressed official support for the 2-state solution is Saudi Arabia (that is to say, the Saudi foreign minister has gone on public record supporting it).

I don't think every nation on that list supports Palestine...even if they claim to. I also think they're likely to have some unique ideas and goals depending upon their various political circumstances. Saudi Arabia is currently still one of our "quiet" allies....but frankly, this administration has done rather poorly in maintaining that relationship. Khashoggi is a sad story but much like everything under the Trump administration....it's a bit overblown. For example...

'Night of the beating': details emerge of Riyadh Ritz-Carlton purge | Saudi Arabia | The Guardian

<strong>Exclusive: </strong>three years on, some of the Saudi detainees reveal what they say took place<br><strong></strong>

amp.theguardian.com

For every 100 people I might know familiar with Khashoggi there might be 1-3 familiar with "the night of the beatings" not because it was a lesser story....but rather because the murder of a dissident journalist is a much more romantic story to the political left than one of the wealthy Saudi Arabia elite being rounded up and tortured at the hands of the crown prince's men. The majority of our mainstream media didn't want to spend time on anything that might give the public a sense of sympathy for wealthy men in finance.

The other story overblown was the Kurdish disappointment at our exit from Syria.

'Trump betrayed us': Fleeing Kurds condemn U.S. decision to leave Syria

As U.S. troops follow President Trump's orders and pull out of northeast Syria, they leave behind men they fought side by side with against the Islamic State group. Amid fears of ethnic cleansing by Turkey, the Kurds have agreed to withdraw from a border area where fighting is underway, and now...

www.google.com

I have no doubt that the Kurds were disappointed in many ways. To read the story though...you'd think this rather orderly and well executed withdrawal was an irreparable stain on the honor and reputation of our military. Compare that to Biden's completely bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan and the exact same media appears to blame anyone other than Biden. That's despite the blatant lies the Biden administration told (claims that we "only" left a couple hundred US citizens in Afghanistan whereas later reports claimed that the true number was closer to 7000-9000) and the story was quieted by a well timed raid on Trump's property for classified docs despite the sitting president not only being guilty of the same crime, but Biden also shared his highly classified military documents to a completely unqualified biographer.

That's the sort of crime that an airman caught committing is facing hard time for....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/01/jack-teixeira-discord-leak/

Interestingly, the Saudis think Biden is such a joke they don't even bother answering when he calls.

Saudi Arabia and UAE leaders ‘decline calls with Biden’ amid fears of oil price spike

The Gulf nations have capacity to pump more oil to ease supply fears but relations with the US have chilled during Biden administration

www.google.com

Say what you will of Trump's policies in the region but I think it's undeniable that he simply made smarter decisions than the entire Biden team in regards to middle east foreign policy. Trump supported the relocation of the Israeli capital. He somehow managed to secure a few historic accords between Israel and some of their unfriendly neighbors. He removed Iran's best military strategist from this plane of existence without starting a war. He removed our forces from Afghanistan (something long overdue) without any real problems (certainly none on par with those under Biden) and places like the Ukraine and Israel weren't under attack from our enemies..


I mean....Putin endorsed Biden for president in 2024. You don't exactly need to be a foreign relations expert to see that he isn't at all afraid of the strategy this administration has employed against him....he'd rather face that then Trump. This administration is a joke worldwide and a blessing to those who wish harm on us and our allies.

Putin says Biden is better for Russia than Trump

“He is a more experienced, predictable person, an old-school politician,” the Russian leader said in an interview Wednesday.

www.google.com

 

[HopeSings]

The law seems to protect minorities so it can't be racist against them. It doesn't much matter however because my church is not racist.

I'm not Republican or Democrat. I'm a Christian disciple of Jesus Christ my only king. If I'm a politician then I am racist. It's politicians who engaged in racism not Jesus.

Jesus destroyed race identity. We are all one in Christ as Paul teaches us. We are not flesh or race now. We are new and we are spirit now.

 

[Ana the Ist]

American Jewish interests aren't going to take divestiture from Israeli financial interests lying down.

Easier just to let those students go to some other university.

You know, after the initial rash of protests where they were chasing around jewish students on campus I hadn't looked too closely at the protests because....again, it seemed like nonsense to protest your own university over a war...because no matter what you do, UCLA isn't going to launch a carrier group off N Africa.

So in fairness I went and dug through some articles to try and figure out what exactly is being protested and why, and what (if anything) they want their university to divest from....

And it appears that the protesters don't actually know what they want these universities to divest from. The universities aren't required to list or make public what investments they have...generally. In several cases it appears that one of the demands the protesters are making on the universities is a list of investments....so the protesters can then figure out what sort of divestiture they can protest for lol.

Other things I saw....

1. Conspiracy theory antisemitism far beyond what Alex Jones himself might even dream up. Protesters who don't believe Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, or they don't believe Hamas kidnapped anyone, or don't believe anyone was raped, and these are all fabrications of some zionist/US propaganda. They make the January 6th protesters seem like a bunch of reasonable people who had good planning.

2. Janitors taken hostage. Seriously. 3 people who have never done anything but make these insufferable losers lives more bearable were basically held against their will by a bunch of entitled and unemployed children....for no real reason at all.

3. Protesters who apparently believe that their protest should be a catered event. A female protester said without a hint of irony that despite their total disruption of the university campus....the university was wrong to not provide on site food and water when the protesters were getting hangry. It was an extraordinary stretch for victim hood....and hopefully, the most embarrassing moment of that woman's life.

4. Another protester who tore down kidnapping posters (posters of those kidnapped) claiming victim hood after being expelled, banned from campus, and having her scholarships revoked.

There's a lot more of course, but what I saw makes me think I would double down on my previous statement. These aren't the brightest bulbs in the box. If they didn't realize they wouldn't be catered to during their temper tantrum...and didn't bring food...it seems really unlikely that they have a strong grasp of the university's financial interests abroad. To think these are the same people who want to have the cost of their "education" forgiven is pretty wild. At least when it was Black Lives Matter and the demands centered on "hiring less white people" it was transparently selfish and motivated by economic gain and racism. This apparently is just a bunch of spoiled children wasting what few opportunities they have before they've been cast out of academia with a load of debt and no one to care what any of their political beliefs are.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Jewish donors to a university don't have to be flat-out Zionists to take umbrage at that university's divestiture from any connection to Israel.

It's really unclear what that actually means.

I've read about 6 articles now...from multiple sources...on what the protesters want to divest from.

It's incredibly difficult to find anything specific.

There are general "divest from Israel" or "companies that do business with Israel" type statements. There's no real explicitly lined out understanding of what that means. Israel is a nation....not a stock one buys on Wall Street.

The one thing that is pretty recurrent about these protests is....

1. The students don't know what sort of investments their universities have....in Israel or anywhere else. It's not public knowledge. This is something we can logically deduce from the protesters' demands of wanting to know their universities are investing. They wouldn't be demanding the information if they already had it.

2. No universities seem very interested in giving this information to the students. Obviously, there's no good reason to hand it to the students. It will, at best, show very little or nothing to protest and the students are unlikely to believe that....since they don't seem to be willing to consider anything they don't already believe. At worst, it will reveal some sort of investments in Israel....and likely other places that will become cause for more protests. There's no upside to sharing it with protesters.

3. Given the complete futility of these protests....we shouldn't be forgiving these debts. These aren't just students who are difficult to employ....they can't plan a picnic, let alone a protest. Let them carry the burden of their debt and if they complain, remind them of how they spent their time in academia.

 

[RDKirk]

It's really unclear what that actually means.

I've read about 6 articles now...from multiple sources...on what the protesters want to divest from.

It's incredibly difficult to find anything specific.

There are general "divest from Israel" or "companies that do business with Israel" type statements. There's no real explicitly lined out understanding of what that means. Israel is a nation....not a stock one buys on Wall Street.

The one thing that is pretty recurrent about these protests is....

1. The students don't know what sort of investments their universities have....in Israel or anywhere else. It's not public knowledge. This is something we can logically deduce from the protesters' demands of wanting to know their universities are investing. They wouldn't be demanding the information if they already had it.

2. No universities seem very interested in giving this information to the students. Obviously, there's no good reason to hand it to the students. It will, at best, show very little or nothing to protest and the students are unlikely to believe that....since they don't seem to be willing to consider anything they don't already believe. At worst, it will reveal some sort of investments in Israel....and likely other places that will become cause for more protests. There's no upside to sharing it with protesters.

3. Given the complete futility of these protests....we shouldn't be forgiving these debts. These aren't just students who are difficult to employ....they can't plan a picnic, let alone a protest. Let them carry the burden of their debt and if they complain, remind them of how they spent their time in academia.

The protesters are "scattergunning." Protests these days are different from the Civil Rights Era. In the Civil Rights Era, we almost always had a specific law we wanted passed or repealed. These days it's just "stop making us unhappy!"

No, that's not it either. Seriously, grok the mindset of Critical Theory. I am not exaggerating to say it's the same mindset of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

With regard to the Israel situation, the Israelis are "Colonizers." The Israelis are the eternal Oppressor that must be eliminated or ground down to fecklessness. The end goal of this ideology is convergent with the end goal of Muslim extremists...enemy of my enemy.

 

[Ana the Ist]

The protesters are "scattergunning."

I'd agree.

Protests these days are different from the Civil Rights Era. In the Civil Rights Era, we almost always had a specific law we wanted passed or repealed. These days it's just "stop making us unhappy!"

Indeed. Whether we look at the examples set by Greta or Colin....the idea of "protest" seems to have been reduced to "look at me and how upset I am over (insert nebulous problem with no solution ) now fix it".

I don't see these as protests though....but as grifts.

Ultimately, without any endpoint, they serve as little more than fame generating projects. I'm not a big fan of most of the new terms and phrases that have popped up in recent years....but virtue signaling is one of the few useful ones that genuinely describes a fairly novel phenomenon.

No, that's not it either. Seriously, grok the mindset of Critical Theory. I am not exaggerating to say it's the same mindset of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

I'm going to stand by the statement that these people aren't smart. This interview of two protesters at NYU went viral because they openly admit they have no clue why they are protesting NYU.

The "woke" ideology that started these sheep down their path may have been similar in mindset to the cultural revolution....but these are the useful idiots of the eastern bloc.

The cultural revolution wasn't this disorganized and stupid. It didn't just have a method, it had a goal. Communist purges served a dual purpose....the elimination of any communist leadership that was aware of the many failures of the communist leader, and the scapegoating of those failures onto the middle management leadership. It may look senseless and pointlessly cruel....but it definitely had a point and end goal.

With regard to the Israel situation, the Israelis are "Colonizers." The Israelis are the eternal Oppressor that must be eliminated or ground down to fecklessness. The end goal of this ideology is convergent with the end goal of Muslim extremists...enemy of my enemy.

Again, I think you're giving them too much credit...

These are not smart people.

That may be the rhetoric they use...but it doesn't explain why they are there. The crowd can be heard chanting "disclose...divest". The disclose part of this is literally a request for a reason to protest.

This is an easy situation to fix.

1. Tear gas.
2. Arrests.
3. Expulsion.

You need not worry about or fear these new Marxists @RDKirk . I can recall a few years ago when they concerned me but they aren't focused on revolution (which is the only thing Marxism succeeds at) and they fail immediately at basically everything else. It's not an ideology that's centered on truth...so it quite simply cannot succeed at identifying and solving problems.