The Zombification of America

 Last week a headline read:

Columbia University agrees to Trump administration demands to restore funding

Among other things Columbia University agreed to empower 36 campus officers with the power to make arrests. The university also agreed to stricter controls over its Middle East studies department, which will now be overseen by a new senior vice provost who "will conduct a thorough review of the portfolio of programs in regional areas across the University, starting immediately with the Middle East" (Eye Witness News, 22 March 2025).

Similar reports from other places indicate that institutions like universities in various parts of the USA are complying with the demands of the Trump regime without protest, even if the executive demands have no legal basis. They have, in effect, decided to play it safe and be politically correct. They are like burrowing apparatchiks, submissive to those they see as having more power, and bullying those (like their students) who have less power. 

This is a sad contrast to many South African universities, which, when the National Party government sought to impose apartheid on universities that had open admission policies, staff, students and university administrations stood together in protest. They stood together for academic freedom. That was after the National Party government had been in power for 11 years. In the USA the Trump regime had been in power for barely two months when universities and others were seen to capitulate to demands for political correctness.

In South Africa it was after 11 years of National Party rule. After 21 years, or 31 years of civil repression, protest was more muted, but was still there. Some did not bow the knee to Baal, and mindlessly capitulate to unjust demands, without questioning them. 

And it is this mindlessness that is the mark of the zombie. A zombie is a corpse that is reanimated by a witch to be a servant that does the witch's bidding. Since it is a corpse, the zombie is literally brain-dead. It has no living brain so it cannot question the witch's orders. 

More recently there has been a huge uproar in the media about the leaking of a US government plan to bomb Yemen. People are going on and on about how terrible it is to talk about it, especially in the hearing of someone who is not in the inner cabal itself.  Hardly a word is said about the morality of the bombing itself, that people are actually going to die. The talk about the deed is taken more seriously, and seen as more evil than the deed itself. They strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. 

It's yet another sign of zombification, which is well expressed in the Cranberries' song Zombie. Click on the link, listen to it, and weep.

Thousands Protest After Wisconsin Governor Threatens to Deploy National Guard to Intimidate Unions | Moral Low Ground

They're rioting in Africa, there are earthquakes in New Zealand. It's all over the TV news channels. The US government has been expressing disapproval of an armed forces crackdown on demonstrators in Libya, but I had to turn to Russia Today to learn that the Governor of Wisconsin in the USA is threatening to use armed forces to intimidate demonstrators there, and that those protests have been going on for longer than the ones in Libya, but have gone largely unreported in the rest of the world.

Thousands Protest After Wisconsin Governor Threatens to Deploy National Guard to Intimidate Unions | Moral Low Ground:

ThinkProgress reports that Governor Walker has threatened to call out the National Guard if state workers resist his draconian rollback of their rights. Walker told a reporter that the Guard is “prepared… for whatever the governor, their commander-in-chief, might call for.” Veterans groups denounced the governor’s threat to use the National Guard, traditionally deployed to help citizens in times of natural disasters or other life-and-death emergencies, to settle personal scores. “Maybe the new governor doesn’t understand yet– but the National Guard is not his own personal intimidation force,” said Robin Eckstein, an Iraq War veteran, former Wisconsin National Guard member and member of the veterans group VoteVets.org.

I wonder if any National Guard members in Wisconsin will be defecting to Canada, as the Libyan Airforce pilots defected to Malta?

Zimbabwe: Harare Descends Into Chaos As Ruling Party Militia Loot Shops

What's the difference between Zimbabwe and Egypt?

In Egypt they're protesting for democracy; in Zimbabwe they're rioting against it.

allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Harare Descends Into Chaos As Ruling Party Militia Loot Shops:

Harare came to a standstill on Monday when a ZANU PF mob engulfed the city in chaos, destroying property worth thousands of dollars, mainly belonging to foreign owned companies.

Our correspondent Simon Muchemwa told us that dozens of shops were looted when the ZANU PF militia went on a rampage, as police details stood by watching ordinary people and shop owners being abused and brutalised. Shops belonging to Zimbabweans were also caught up in the crossfire.

The Burning Times

Burning things (and people) you don't like seems to be a popular way of getting rid of them. It's also a great way of getting publicity for a cause. And as people in show business know, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

One of the examples that always springs to my mind is the group of anti-war protesters in California who publicly burnt a dog.

It was during the Vietnam War, and they burnt the dog in protest against the war. The public outrage was enormous, and newspapers editorialised about how they were harming their cause, and their action was counter-productive because it made people who might be sympathetic to their cause more likely to be hostile towards it.

But in fact the negative reaction, the outrage itself, was the whole point. They demonstrated that American society was far more concerned and far more outraged about a dog being burnt in California than it was about hundreds of human children being burnt in Vietnam by American napalm bombs.

And the latest in a long line of such protests is that of Terry Jones, minister of a small church in the backwoods of Florida, USA, who threatened to burn copies of the Qur'an. It caused tweets of outrage to flow through Twitter, and huge protests throughout the world. It certainly put his church on the map.

Terry Jones won't be the last Qur'an burning publicity hound | Richard Adams | World news | guardian.co.uk:

Jones's threats will be subject to the law of diminishing returns. Next time he threatens to do burn a Qur'an – and I fear there will be a next time – he'll be handled with much more caution by the US media, which has made itself look ridiculous in being outfoxed by the crackpot pastor of a miniscule [sic] church in the swamps of Florida.

US President Barack Obama, in a memorable soundbite, said that it would be a recruiting bonanza for Al-Qaeda.

President Obama was probably right, but he has done little to stop the even more powerful recruiting bonanzas for Al-Qaeda caused by burning children in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Those outraged by the burning of the Qu'ran may demonstrate in the streets, wave a few placards, burn an American flag or two, and go home feeling self-righteous, just like the Revd Terry Jones.

It is the ones whose cousins and brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts who were killed when the US forces bombed wedding celebrations, or went on their killing sprees in places like Fallujah who are more likely to join Al-Qaeda.

In the 1960s there was also the phenomenon of the self-immolation of Buddhist monks in protest against the Vietnam War. Instead of burning other people or things, they burnt themselves.

This had a spin-off in South Africa, when staff and students at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg were protesting against some government atrocity -- I think it was the banning of student leader Ian Robertson.

I was overseas at the time, but a friend wrote to me in a letter about the protest, which took the form of a torchlight procession into the centre of the town. As they were crossing the bridge over the Umsinduzi River the procession was attacked by National Party-supporters. One of the protesters was an English lecturer and atheist, Cake Manson (who was thought by the English Department to be the greatest playwright since Shakespeare). He retaliated by sticking his lighted torch in the faces of the attackers, shouting the war-cry, "Burn you Buddhist bastard, burn!"

And that takes us back to California.

Burn, Baby! Burn!:

When rioters in Watts, California, began shouting 'Burn, Baby! BURN!' in the turmoil of 1965, they were echoing the most popular cry on rhythm-and-blues radio: The trademark of Magnificent Montague, the most exciting R&B disc jockey ever to stroll through Soulsville.

In Los Angeles on KGFJ, and earlier in New York on WWRL, Montague yelled 'Burn!' whenever he was playing a record that moved him. His listeners followed suit, calling Montague and shouting 'Burn!' on the air. The emotion in that exchange reverberated with as much excitement as the music of Stevie Wonder, Sam Cooke and Otis Redding.

There's something about the Burning Times...

Creative community protest - Russian Style

Fed up with those VIP convoys with flashing blue lights that expect everyone to get out of their way and sometimes behave in an arrogantly authoritarian manner when people don't move out of the way quickly enough? Here's an idea from Russia The Network: CREATIVE COMMUNITY PROTEST - Russian Style:

Fed up with the blaring sirens used by government officials to get to their destinations faster than the ordinary Muscovite, a group of frustrated drivers, organized by Alexei Dozorov, is fighting back.

Using toy buckets on the tops of their cars to look like sirens, the protesters assemble in a Moscow parking lot and get their instructions from Dozorov.

Obey the traffic rules, he tells them so the police wont have a reason to pull over the drivers. Make sure your drivers license and papers are in order, and know the driving rules, he advises.

In case he is stopped Dozorov has a copy of a court decision erasing a traffic fine for a driver having a blue bucket on top of the car.

It's incidents like these that make such protests necessary: News - Crime & Courts: Cop in court for assault:

Colleagues of a traffic officer charged with assaulting a Cato Ridge woman for failing to get out of his way on the freeway tried to bar the media from photographing him yesterday.

Edward Xolani Mtshali's first court appearance was brief and his case was adjourned to May 14, so that his legal team could obtain statements.

Eyewitness News: Family slam blue-light convoy killer:

The family of a Johannesburg man who was killed when a blue-light VIP convoy ploughed into his car say the police officer responsible for his death should have received a harsher sentence.

Twenty-year-old Kyle Harris was hit by a vehicle in South African Reserve Bank convoy at a West Rand intersection two years ago.

Police officer Johannes Ramalope was found guilty of culpable homicide and was given a two-year sentence suspended for five years in the Roodepoort Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.

Legalbrief - 'Blue light' VIP case delayed to next year:

The 'Blue light' VIP escort case, in which two Pietermaritzburg policemen are charged with six counts of culpable homicide, has been adjourned to 21 January.

The Times reports that Hlanganani Nxumalo and Caiphas Ndlela have appeared in the Pietermaritzburg Regional Court. Nxumalo, who allegedly fired at a vehicle which then crashed on the N3 highway near Pietermaritzburg, is also charged with the negligent discharging of a firearm, while Ndlela is also charged with reckless and negligent driving. Attorneys John Wills and Mohamed Essa told Magistrate Chris van Vuuren that Ndlela wanted to brief an advocate to defend him.

The doggy rioter teargas show

The dog that hasn’t missed a single riot for years: This Blog Rules:

There has been lots of riots and protests from both anarchists and workers in Athens, Greece specially the past few years. One interesting thing is that there is one dog that is spotted at these riots from 2008 till today

Follow the link for more evidence. My daughter posted the link on Facebook, and I thought it was worth sharing.

Where were you?

People sometimes ask "Where were you when such and such and event happened?" Or, more likely, they remember where they themselves were. And now people are remembering where they were during the first moon landing, 40 years ago this week. Jim Forest's memories of where he was are particularly interesting because they recall another aspect of the 1960s -- he was in jail.

On Pilgrimage: The whole Earth in a prison cell:

Most people at the time saw the moon landing on television. In my case, I listened to it happening via a pair of low-tech earphones made available to me by the State of Wisconsin. I was in a narrow cell at Waupun State Prison.

Prison had become my temporary home due to an act of protest against the Vietnam War – I was one of 14 people who burned files of Milwaukee’s nine draft boards. Now I was in the early weeks of serving a two-year sentence – in fact one year, given the “good behavior” factor.

As for me, I was travelling through the Kalahari. I was doing that during the Apollo XI space mission, and during the Apollo XII mission as well. At the time of the Apollo XIII mission I didn't make it to the Kalahari, and Apollo XIII didn't make it to the moon either.

Blog at your peril

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk More bloggers than ever face arrest for exposing human rights abuses or criticising governments, says a report. In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006, it revealed. More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, said the report. Arrested bloggers exposed corruption in government, abuse of human rights or suppression of protests. They criticised public policies and took political figures to task. Jail time followed arrest for many bloggers, said the report, which found that the average prison sentence for blogging was 15 months. The longest sentence found by the WIA was eight years. The report pointed out that it is not just governments in the Middle East and East Asia that have taken steps against those publishing their opinions online. In the last four years, British, French, Canadian and American bloggers have also been arrested.

Hat tip to the Christian Radical

Tibet -- mixed messages

I've been getting mixed messages about Tibet.

On the one hand there have been pro-democracy organisations like Avaaz trying to drum up support for Tibetan rebels:

On Monday, thousands of people in 84 cities worldwide marched for justice for Tibet--and delivered the 1.5 million-signature Avaaz petition to Chinese embassies and consulates around the globe. (Click for photos.) Avaaz staff have engaged with Chinese diplomats in New York and London, delivering the petition and urging action. And a growing chorus of world leaders is joining the call...

Together, we've built an unprecedented wave of global pressure. The Avaaz petition is one of the biggest and fastest-growing global online petitions on any topic in history; since it launched on March 18, it has been signed by 100,000 people per day--an average of more than 4,000 per hour, day and night.

Politicians understand that there is power in numbers. We need to show them that they have more to gain by listening to their own people--and heeding the cry for help from Tibet--than by giving China a pass in the lead-up to the Olympic Games. Take action now

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_report_back/5.php/?cl=69533376

And then I read blog posts like this:

The Dalai Lama � Steph’s blog:

You don’t win a Nobel Peace Prize without having blood on your hands and the Dalai Lama is no different, it might suit his followers (the Gelug sect) and the Americans to pretend that the ”God-King” is a wise, benign, pacifist and has some sort of democratic mandate to rule Tibet, but that’s plainly not true.

He’s a murderous, racist, charlatan and Western stooge. When he was in power he was a brutal, merciless, theocratic despot, who lived in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace, and his followers were eye-gouging, child-buggering, corrupt, religious fanatics, (see Michael Parenti: Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth). Although, that doesn’t stop the murderous old fraud and his “Free Tibet Movement” from being a cause celeb for liberal imperialists and gerbil lovers, under the pretext of human rights.

(Gerbils? What do they have to do with it? Are they native to Tibet?)

And then there are fellow South African bloggers like Reggie Nel saying things like Reggie: Stand with Tibet - Support the Dalai Lama: "After decades of repression, Tibetans are crying out to the world for change. China's leaders are right now making a crucial choice between escalating repression or dialogue that could determine the future of Tibet, and China."

But then again, on the other hand there is this: servethepeople: Tibet:

For his part, the Dalai Lama has successfully cultivated an image of gentleness, peace and simplicity which ahs an undeniable appeal to Westerners sickened by their own countries’ involvement in or support for exploitative and oppressive relations with the Third World, or alienated by the dehumanising nature of technological change and the general rat race of urban living. The Dalai is a “living Buddha” who has won acclaim, including a Nobel Peace Prize, for his rejection of violence.

The Dalai is also a clever and sophisticated politician, a wily manipulator of media opportunity and celebrity support.

However, he is not so clever that he cannot conceal his splittist intentions as regards China, nor his sham “patriotism” and “independence”.

These sound like harsh words, but they can be substantiated through the Dalai’s own materials.

So who is one to believe?

I think I go with Grant Walliser when he says Thought Leader � Grant Walliser � Free Tibet like you freed Kosovo:

Bottom line: China is a big pimp on the street and Serbia is not. That means you can gang up on Serbia, garner support in Kosovo and build US military bases in nice strategic positions. It means you can run detention centres like Guant�namo Bay in Kosovo and it means you can kick your old enemy Russia and your new one Iran smugly in the balls. And should Russian diplomacy make inroads with Poland and the Czech Republic when you need to put up your missile defence system at the confluence of Russia and Middle East, what a great alternative your new best buddy Kosovo would make. The clues to otherwise indefensible and incomprehensible behaviour are all in the timing and the agendas playing out behind the scenes (emphasis mine).

Come to think of it, what did Avaaz say about Kosovo?