OK-- Everybody Back to Class!

More than 400 protesters were arrested yesterday, most of them at Columbia University and City College of New York. More widely, more than 1,500 people have been arrested on college and university campuses since April 18 as schools prepare for spring commencement ceremonies.

Approximately 300 people were arrested by the New York Police Department on the Columbia University and City College campuses. New York Mayor Eric Adams said the entry at Hamilton Hall in Columbia was led by people "who are not affiliated with the university." Those arrested are facing charges from trespassing to criminal mischief.  Final exams begin Friday and deadlines for submission of grades for graduates has been moved from May 10 to May 13.

On April 22, 133 individuals were arrested at NYU's Gould Plaza on campus and 65 were current students, faculty and staff, the university said in a news release earlier today.

The New York Police Department arrested individuals Wednesday afternoon after dispersing a protest encampment on the campus of Fordham University Lincoln Center, the NYPD said in a social media post.

Hours after authorizing police to force out a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus, the leader of the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced that “illegal activity has been resolved,” with about 30 protesters cited. The encampment at the Madison campus violated school policy and state law.

At Tulane university, 14 people were arrested at the campus, and the encampment there has now been removed. 

The Emory Police Department (EPD) arrested a convicted felon, who had crossed state lines to come to the university’s campus amid protests, according to a release from Emory University.

California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, in Arcata announced it will hold a modified in-person commencement on May 11 after law enforcement regained control of two buildings early Tuesday following a multi-day occupation that prompted a campus lockdown.

Police and supporting law enforcement agencies dispersed an on-campus protest at University of South Florida, with 10 people taken into custody.  Police found that one of those arrested was carrying a concealed firearm.

The University of Georgia Police Department arrested 16 people during a pro-Palestine protest. About half of those arrested were students, with the others listed as "visitors."  All were charged with criminal trespassing.

 

Iranian Security Forces Molested and Killed Teen Protester

An Iranian teenager was sexually assaulted and killed by three men working for Iran's security forces, according to a leaked document from Iran.  The document shows what happened to 16-year-old Nika Shakarami who vanished from an anti-regime protest in 2022.  Her body was found nine days later. The government claimed she killed herself.

Marked "Highly Confidential", the report summarizes a hearing on Nika's case held by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) - the security force that defends the country's Islamic establishment. It includes what it says are the names of her killers and the senior commanders who tried to hide the truth.

It contains disturbing details of events in the back of an undercover van in which security forces were restraining Nika.  One of the men molested her while he was sitting on her.  Despite being handcuffed and restrained, Nika fought back, kicking and swearing.  Nika's fighting back provoked the men to beat her with batons.

Nika Shakarami's disappearance and death were widely reported, and her picture has become synonymous with the fight by women in Iran for greater freedoms. As street protests spread across Iran in the autumn of 2022, her name was shouted by crowds furious at the country's strict rules on the compulsory veil [hijab].

Just before she vanished, Nika was filmed on the evening of 20 September near Laleh Park in central Tehran, standing on a dumpster setting fire to hijabs. Others around her chanted "death to the dictator" - referring to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. What she could not have known at the time is that she was being watched, as the classified report makes clear.

Delays Help Russia

The Story of an Ill-Behaved Bitch

Remember Mitt Romney, who strapped his dog Seamus to the roof of his car for a 12-hour road trip? And Florida senator and Medicare fraudster Rick Scott, who adopted a dog when he ran for governor, named him Reagan, and then abandoned him for doing dog things?  Well now we have South Dakota governor (and college dropout) Kristi Noem.  She was previously best known as the COVID-denying governor of one of America’s top rectangular states-- but she has now added dog killer to her résumé.  In a new book to be released next month and shared with The Guardian, Noem says she killed her “untrainable” 14-month-old hunting dog Cricket after it ate a local family’s chickens. 

According to Noem, Cricket was an incorrigible dog. So incorrigible that at one point, Noem used an electronic collar to force the dog to behave. That didn’t work, and one day on the way home from a pheasant hunt—which Cricket ruined by going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life” (i.e., acting like a dog)—Cricket attacked a local family’s chickens, grabbing them "one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.”

Noem, who had just witnessed Cricket's enthusiasm with wild birds, didn't stop to think that she couldn't be trusted in the presence of domesticated birds.  Instead, she decided that it was her dog's fault, and decided to get rid of her. “I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, claiming she was “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” (no evidence of that, btw).  Noem decided that Cricket was “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.” and  that she “had to put her down.”

Oh, but she wasn’t done. As it happens, her dog murder touched off a mini-killing spree. “After it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”  And that’s when she iced the goat. 

Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.

Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down.”

The story was met with widespread condemnation online.  The Democratic National Committee said: "If you want elected officials who don't brag about brutally killing their pets... vote Democrat."   Meghan McCain, the daughter of 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain, said: "You can recover from a lot of things in politics, change the narrative etc - but not from killing a dog."

 

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Teasing Tesla

Freaky Dust Storm Turns Athens Orange

A dramatic orange haze has descended over Athens as clouds of dust have blown in from the Sahara desert. It is one of the worst such episodes to hit Greece since 2018, according to officials.

Greece had already been struck by similar clouds in late March and early April, which also covered areas of Switzerland and southern France. The skies are predicted to clear on Wednesday, says Greece's weather service.

Air quality has deteriorated in many areas of the country and on Wednesday morning the Acropolis in Athens was no longer visible because of the dust. The cloud has reached as far north as Thessaloniki.  Greeks with respiratory conditions have been urged to limit the time they spend outdoors, wear protective masks and avoid taking physical exercise until the dust clouds clear.

The Sahara releases 60 to 200 million tons of mineral dust per year. Most of the dust quickly descends to Earth, but some of the small particles can travel huge distances, sometimes reaching Europe.  The atmosphere especially in southern Greece has become stifling because of the combination of dust and high temperatures.

Dust plumes from the Sahara are not uncommon across Europe and can vary in intensity, however, they tend to occur most often during the spring and autumn. This current event across the Eastern Mediterranean was caused by an area of low pressure over Libya that brought strong southerly winds, drawing in high concentrations of dust and sand from North Africa into Greece. The southerly winds also brought hot desert air with them. Temperatures rose to well above the average for late April across the Greek mainland and islands, with 36.6C recorded in the Chania region of Crete.