NHJournal has the video you won't see on the local TV news:
Yes, the enthusiastic (but small) crowd enjoyed mindlessly repeating the catchy chant: “It is right to rebel / U.S., Israel, go to hell!”
It's part of Michael Graham's report: 'U.S., Israel, Go to Hell!': Pro-Palestine Activists Bring Campus Protests to UNH.
One speaker, a member of the UNH faculty, told the crowd that “the genocide” isn’t going to end “from us going and asking these people over and over again, ‘Please, please stop.’ They don’t care. So we should answer back, ‘We’re sick of this [expletive], and we’re not going to take it anymore.'”
Then, indicating an American flag nearby, the speaker added, “The lives of the people of Palestine are more important than that dirty rag!” The crowd cheered. The same speaker also referred to the Stars and Stripes as “this Nazi flag.”
Regrettably, Graham doesn't identify the UNH facule.
The protester's demands: an "immediate ceasefire", of course, a demand made only of Israel. Nothing about hostages.
The headline on the WMUR report linked above is:
Protesters demand University of New Hampshire divest from Israel-based companies
But laater in the same story:
[Protesters} are calling for leadership at UNH to divest from companies that support Israel.
WMUR, those are two different things. But, fortunately, UNH is likely to do neither.
In related news, Jeff Maurer asks us: We're All Noticing the Hypocrisy, Right?.
Campus protests have sparked a culture war flare up, which are not typically America’s best moments. Culture war fights are the trash TV of politics: They’re pulpy and inane, and they cut our collective IQ roughly in half. They typically end like an episode of Baywatch, in that there’s a forced “what did we learn?” moment that should probably just say: “Honestly, none of us learned jack shit.”
But let’s see if we can learn something in spite of ourselves. I propose this: Let’s take a moment to note the constant, egregious, eye-watering hypocrisy that’s emerged from all sides during this episode. Many people are loudly espousing principles that they recently denounced; it’s as if Richard Dawkins decided to become a priest, or if Princess Di had started a company that makes landmines. To even attempt these feats of duplicity implies a belief that perhaps nobody will notice, so: Let’s notice. Let’s take a moment to register the gobsmacking hypocrisy that’s everywhere right now.
For example: It’s fucking incredible that some leftists have the nerve to suddenly make appeals to free speech. For years, many leftists mocked free speech as nothing but a fig leaf for bigots. They coined the snarky “freeze peach” meme and responded forcefully when my former podcast co-host T Chatty Dubstep (as he likes to be called) organized a pro-free speech letter. The apotheosis of this duplicity occurred a few months ago when university administrators used free speech principles to justify their light treatment of protesters. As many noted at the time: Their arguments weren’t actually wrong — the problem was that their schools had spent the past several years imposing restrictions on speech that make a Trappist monastery seem like a coke party. To spend years policing milquetoast non-racism, and then turn on a dime and cite free speech in defense of blatant anti semitism requires balls that should truly be on display in the Smithsonian.
I was previously unaware that episodes of Baywatch ended like that. I'm pretty sure I never watched one the whole way through.
But, reader, be aware that Maurer's next paragraph begins: "Meanwhile, right-wingers have gone the other way." We've seen that here in New Hampshire recently.
Also of note:
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What could go wrong? Plenty. Joe Lancaster notes some busy regulatory bee-buzzing: FCC Set To Reinstate Net Neutrality Rules That Seem More Unnecessary Than Ever.
Of all the modern technological advances, the internet is certainly one of the most impressive. For most consumers, it went from an inscrutable concept to a ubiquitous presence within a quarter of a century.
We owe much of that explosive growth to the freedom and openness that early internet adopters enjoyed thanks to minimal government regulation.
This week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will likely reinstate net neutrality rules to promote fairness in internet access. But these rules seem less and less necessary all the time, while threatening the very openness that built the internet in the first place.
If we're lucky, the damage will be mostly in wasted time and resources by lawyers for the government and the affected businesses, reflected in your cable or cell bill.
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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Veronique de Rugy is sick and tired, and has her own demand: Stop the 'Emergency Spending' Charade Already.
This week, Congress moved closer to passing four separate bills with $95 billion in funding for Ukraine, Israel, Indo-Pacific allies and the domestic submarine industrial base. This funding has been debated for months, with much of it intended for wars that have been going on — and likely will continue — for a while. In other words, it's not new or surprising. Yet once again, it will be labeled "emergency spending," a tool allowing legislators to double down on their fiscal irresponsibility.
Before I explain my objection to their behavior, I would like to make two points. The first one might be the most important: I don't want you readers to get the impression that Congress is only irresponsible when using the emergency label to spend money. Congress is irresponsible all the time. Legislators have accumulated $34 trillion in debt without any real collective thinking about how to pay for it. The deficit is at 5.6% in a time when America is at peace and the economy is growing. They have done much of this deficit spending outside of the emergency process.
Second, there's nothing wrong with using the emergency label to pay for truly unexpected spending. When an unexpected catastrophe hits, legislators should have a way to appropriate money quickly without having to wait for the next budget to be passed. That's what, in theory, supplemental bills are for. The emergency label provides Congress with some legroom. Legislators should not have to think through where every dollar will come from while a short-term crisis is underway.
The label is used for the worst reason: it allows Congress to avoid the spending rules it made for itself.
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An argument against interest. I'm a patron of the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library, and shell out $90/year for that since I don't live in Portsmouth. I estimate that works out to $1.00-$1.50 per checked-out book for me, a pretty good deal. So my eyebrows raised a bit by Marc Joffe's hey-kids-what-time-is-it headline at Cato: It’s Time to Take a Hard Look at Public Libraries.
Like mom and apple pie, the public library seems so intrinsically good that it should be beyond criticism. But like any institution that consumes millions of tax dollars, public libraries should not be free from scrutiny. And the facts are that neighborhood libraries have largely outlived their usefulness and no longer provide value for the public money spent on them.
[…]
The public library’s historical functions of lending physical books and enabling patrons to view reference materials are being made obsolete by digital technology. An increasing proportion of adults are consuming e‑books and audiobooks in addition to or instead of printed books, with younger adults more likely to use these alternative formats.
Well, lame response: many libraries, including PPL do offer audiobooks and e-books for checkout.
Joffe makes other arguments too. But the real argument is one Joffe doesn't make explicitly: public libraries represent a net subsidy from non-readers to readers. Which, given well-known correlations, almost certainly means an income transfer to the well-off (I include myself) from the not-quite-as-well-off.
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