Please get past the intro of facts, and listen to the abuse of the Palestinians, especially the thousands of children over the years. For those who have argued with me in the past (I doubt you read my blogs now) listen to how they treat the child in pretrial prison and how the trial is conducted. Children, yes children are terrified, hurt by being beaten, raped, sexually abused, have been shot, arrested at night in their homes and kept with blind folds and in the dark, they are not given lawyers until the day of court by which time they have been forced to sign fake confessions or plea bargain do to pain or fear. Damn it I was an abused kid, I know the paralyzing fear of hearing the heavy footsteps coming toward you, the mind numbing cascade of desperation of not knowing what they were going to do to me next or would they walk past me. They are tried by the military and have no civil rights! My dogs that love gravy if another country did that to ten of our kids we would go to war with them … OH wait that was what Hamas tried to do with no chance of wining. Listen to this and understand that Israel and their military have been provoking these attacks and lying to the world about it. Please listen to the abuse of these children, these people who have no way to prevent their treatment. Hugs. Scottie
You will have heard this claim said over and over and over again. Here’s why it’s monstrously false.
Kids are not born haters, they are taught to hate by adults and older kids around them. Every maga republican and fundamentalist religious leader is spreading this hate like an infectious disease. Hugs. Scottie
A juvenile suspect has been arrested in connection to an incident at the Newberg Public Library in which a window that displayed an LGBTQIA+ Pride flag was shattered by a BB gun.
According to the Newberg-Dundee Police Department in a post on Facebook, police were originally dispatched to investigate the incident on Wednesday at 7:15 p.m. No one was injured and it was initially investigated as a vandalism complaint.
It’s unclear what charges may brought to the juvenile, including whether or not they may include bias crime charges. However, police said the case is being “referred to the Yamhill County Juvenile Department for prosecution.
"A pride flag displayed at a library in Newberg, Oregon, was shot at with a pellet gun this week, according to police, who are investigating it as a possible hate crime. … similar attacks across the country within days of the start of Pride Month."https://t.co/PHYWJu9H9o
Finally and about time reporters are starting to push back against tRump and his sycophants lies. Maybe Fox losing a almost a billion dollars for endorsing lies might have wakened them up. Stephanopoulos was angry the guy kept saying it even after he corrected him several times. Hugs. Scottie
Trump lawyer Will Scharf: “This case in New York? It was called the zombie case. It sat and sat and sat. It could have been brought at any point after 2020. And then suddenly, when President Trump announced his campaign for president, it was dusted off, rushed in front of a grand jury and then rushed into court.
“You want to talk about the politicization of the legal system? I mean, this is exhibit A. I vehemently disagree that the district attorney in New York was not politically motivated here. And I vehemently disagree that President Biden and his political allies aren’t up to their necks in this prosecution.”
ABC host George Stephanopoulos: “There’s no evidence of that! Sir, I’m not gonna let you continue to say that! There’s just zero evidence of that! This has nothing to do with President Biden.”
RELATED: Scharf is running for Missouri attorney general and a couple of weeks ago Jimmy Kimmel had a field day with Scharf’s very creepy smile, calling him “the first human attorney to be generated by AI.” The clip below is cued up.
George Stephanopoulos pushes back on Trump lawyer Will Scharf after Scharf alleges some form of collusion between Bragg and Biden: "There's no evidence of that. Sir, I'm not gonna let you continue to say that. There's just zero evidence. The DA in Manhattan is elected." pic.twitter.com/q1F8Bclf8r
Why don’t they want to talk about the fact that Bill Barr made Cy Vance, through the U.S. Attorney in Southern District of NY, to squash this case, meaning it had to wait for a new, Biden-appointed attorney general to reignite it? And why aren’t people bringing this up every single time???
Why even have these trumpanzies on? They just repeat all the bullshit that their master has said at every presser. And Missouri is getting more and more fascist with brainwashed idiots like this guy.
One of the things that’s so ridiculous about blaming Biden is this: Why the DA? Why didn’t Biden just command the DOJ to prosecute Trump for this?
Why have the DA prosecute a lowest-level-felony false-business-record case, when DOJ could have prosecuted Trump for the same coordinated-expenditure federal election crime Michael Cohen went to jail for? Or the plain-as-day tax crime of issuing a phony Form 1099 to Cohen disguising reimbursement as ordinary compensation?
So what started out to be a simple fix of a malware problem on the blogging computer I used to completely change all my old Chrome tabs into Firefox tabs. I don’t like the new agreements on Chrome about information gathering no matter who you make your settings to prevent. Basically everything you do is recorded and sent to Google. It is frustrating. Firefox has less work ability and on Chrome I could always recover old tabs if I did not delete them in entire windows, even on other devices. So far Firefox doesn’t seem to have the same ability. If I start to lose to many pages or comments, then I will have to switch back. While privacy is important I need function much more. I need to be able to switch open tabs from one computer to the other to clean them. I will try this but it may not last.
Here are the open Joe My God posts I wanted to share before this all happened. Enjoy.
Read the full article. Earlier this week and this morning it was reported that Florida educators are receiving state training on teaching Christian nationalism and teaching that genocides such as the one committed by Joseph Stalin are examples of cancel culture.
Read the full platform [PDF]. The 2024 platform echoes many of the anti-LGBTQ items seen in the 2022 platform. The platform also contains the many attacks on trans youth now codified into law in nearly two dozen states. Photo: Newly elected Texas GOP chairman Abraham George.
And it total partisan Christian Nationalist news ….
And in bigotry thuggish maga right wing behavior wins news … But think about this. We have normalized and now accept that people going into a store and destroying the merchandise and attacking the staff is OK as long as it fits our religious or political beliefs. Is this what a civilized society is or has become?
Cultists are also raging in the comments of Walmart’s Instagram post. Sample reply: “Walmart and Pride whatever it is, I hate all this because you glorify everything in this world except what God has created to be from the beginning, which is a family, man married to a woman and their children!! Why don’t you give a true family unit a special month??? This evil agenda to shove all that’s unnatural down our throat will be your downfall one day!! God will not be mocked!! Yes, everyone has a right to choose how you live but why does it have to be glorified for a month??? Just wrong!!!”
Far-right activist Ammon Bundy speaks in front of the Ada county courthouse in downtown Boise, Idaho, in April 2021. Photograph: Darin Oswald/AP
Ammon Bundy poses in Emmett, Idaho in 2018.
Photograph: Kelsey Grey/AP
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At least 66 members of an anti-government group founded by far-right militia figure Ammon Bundy have attempted to win local positions of influence in the Republican party in Oregon, the Guardian can reveal.
The candidates stood for Republican precinct committee person (PCP) slots in three central Oregon counties in this week’s elections, with some facing no opponent and thus winning their positions by default. The role of PCPs includes electing the executive of the county-level GOP apparatus.
The move is part of what appears to be a coordinated attempt to capture the local Republican party infrastructure, following a far-right strategy of “entryism” into more mainstream political bodies.
The electoral fate of all 66 candidates is not yet clear.
Evidence for these PCP candidates’ membership in the People’s Rights Network (PRN) group People’s Rights Oregon 5 (PRO5), and the coordinated nature of their political campaign, comes in part from dozens of hours of their conversations on a radio network set up by and for PRN members. These conversations were intercepted and recorded by an amateur radio operator who provided them to the Guardian.
That source’s name is being withheld due to fears of retaliation from members of the organization, prominent members of which have paramilitary ties.
Other recorded conversations include planning and evaluation of protests against Covid-19 vaccines and masking rules; stories of members’ armed interactions with intruders; and a discussion of the possibility that a contact serving in the military might be able to “scrounge up” some supplies for the group.
The revelations about the group’s highly organized participation in the Republican primaries raise questions about the extent of anti-government infiltration in the Republican party at the grassroots level, both now and in the immediate future.
PRO5’s strategy resembles the “precinct strategy” as coined by Arizona GOP activist Dan Schultz and promoted by Maga figures including Steve Bannon and Trump himself. That reflects a “shared instinct on the far right post-2020”, according to Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR), an organization that researches far-right extremism.
“They want to take over the local party apparatus and change it from the ground up,” he said.
People’s Rights, from pandemic to politics
Bundy founded PRN in April 2020, leveraging burgeoning Covid denialism and his own prominence in far-right circles after leading an armed standoff with federal law enforcement at Oregon’s Malheur national wildlife refuge in 2016.
In the first wave of the Covid pandemic, PRN attracted notoriety for protests against lockdown measures, mask mandates, and vaccines.
Ammon Bundy poses in Emmett, Idaho in 2018. Photograph: Kelsey Grey/AP
The group spread nationwide, and was organized by state, with each state under a state assistant reporting to Bundy, and states subdivided into areas, each under an area assistant. PRO5 is Oregon’s fifth area.
PRO5 has about 1,400 members. Burghart said it is “one of the most successful areas in terms of organization”.
He said: “One of the things separating them from other chapters is the early pivot to politics, which meant they no longer had to rely on Covid denialism, or the succession of conspiracy theories other chapters have tried to mobilize.”
That early pivot resulted in successes in Deschutes county Republican primaries in 2022, with People’s Rights members being elected to enough PCP roles there that they were able to take control of the Deschutes county Republican central committee. PRN PCPs then elected fellow members Scott Stuart as chair, and Connie Whelchel vice-chair.
Stuart – who as a prominent PRO5 activist extensively promoted false conspiracy theories about Covid and the 2020 election, and showed up to a Fourth of July parade in Redmond, Oregon in a Confederate uniform and waving a Confederate battle flag – was now in charge of the county Republican apparatus.
Now PRO5 appears to be rolling out the same strategy in neighboring counties in PRO5’s territory.
Radio network
People’s Rights communicates via radio networks that sometimes involve localised groups organized around particular cities or localities, and sometimes the general membership of the entire group.
The radio network the group uses to communicate incorporates inexpensive handheld radios whose normally short, line-of-sight range is extended by repeaters. Members are thus able to communicate over an almost 50-mile (80km) radius with simple devices. The group started building out its repeater network in July 2020 – in the midst of the pandemic – and added further repeater stations regularly until August 2023.
While repeaters for public benefit are often maintained by amateur radio clubs, nonprofit organizations or public safety agencies, these are set up for the exclusive use of People’s Rights affiliates.
The group prevents unwanted users from transmitting via their repeaters by setting their own radios to send a subaudible tone that identifies them as members of the group to the repeater device. But many of the handheld radios in use by the group use the General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) system. GMRS operators are legally required to register with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The recordings capture the group’s weekly, members-only radio meetings, where members often sign in using their FCC-assigned GMRS callsigns, and where views are aired and plans are hatched regarding Covid-19 restrictions, school boards and local Republican politics.
Registrations are public and searchable on a dedicated FCC website, where individual names and addresses are listed along with call signs that person is licensed and required to use on specific radio service, and FCC registration numbers (FRNs) assigned to individuals.
FCC records thus allow individuals in the PRO5 radio network to be identified by their callsign.
Candidates for power
By cross-matching FCC records of callsigns used in PRO5 radio meet-ups, the Guardian was able to corroborate the source’s information that at least 34 PRO5 members ran for PCP positions in Deschutes county; 12 ran in Crook county; and at least 20 in Jefferson county.
In some precincts they were assured of success.
In precinct 2 of Jefferson county, for example, where 17 PCP slots are available, at least 12 of 18 candidates are identified as PRO5 members; in precinct 11, the only candidate is Paul W May, a People’s Rights member; and in precinct 21, all four candidates for four available slots are members.
With only 49 candidates running for positions in Jefferson county, and PRO5 guaranteed at least 21 committee seats, they will likely constitute a powerful voting bloc for central committee positions when votes are tallied.
One PCP candidate in Deschutes county, where PRO5 already dominates the local Republican apparatus, is BJ Soper, a longtime “patriot movement” figure who has participated in armed standoffs with government agencies, and who has a long list of ties to paramilitary groups.
In 2015, Soper served as a “standing guard” at the Sugar Pine Mine standoff in southern Oregon, where Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and the Soper-organized Pacific Patriots Network (PPN) rallied around miners whose unapproved construction work had drawn enforcement notices from the Bureau of Land Management.
PPN was also present in the early stages of the Malheur standoff, and although Soper initially disapproved of the Bundy-led occupation of the US Fish and Wildlife Service facility at the refuge, at the end of the first week of the standoff PPN issued a “call to action” to “secure a perimeter around the wildlife refuge, its occupiers and the citizens of Harney county”.
Months later, Soper was reportedly running weekly firearms training with another group, the Central Oregon Constitutional Guard.
During the pandemic, Soper rallied to Bundy’s standard, and himself criticized Covid restrictions, mask mandates and vaccines, and wrote on Facebook in 2020 that Osha’s extension of social distancing into 2021 was “a political coup meant to destroy this country”, adding: “I have not worn a mask yet and I refuse to do so at any point. I’ve not social distanced myself at any point since this nonsense has started.”
The same year he became PRN assistant for all of Oregon except area 5, which encompasses Redmond, his city of residence.
Burghart, the IREHR extremism expert, said, “he’s been quite adept at walking the fine line of legality”, adding that Soper “has learned from Bundy’s successes and failures” and has played a central role in PRO5’s successful organizing.
Radio recordings
Recordings of their radio conversations indicate that while the PRO5’s earliest years were dominated by Covid-19 denialism and protests against vaccine and mask mandates, they soon reflected the group’s growing preoccupation with local Republican politics.
As early as the summer of 2021, however, members were being encouraged to involve themselves in local politics.
In a 11 July weekly meeting which included Soper, PRO5 member and current Deschutes PCP candidate Mark Knowles mentioned that there had been “a lot of interest in precinct committee seats in Deschutes county, and told listeners that with a one page application – you could be appointed and have a real say in Deschutes Republican politics”.
Increasingly, speakers at the weekly radio meetings issued reminders of upcoming Republican meetings and social events, including a 22 September 2023 Deschutes Republican Party golf tournament, and a 24 March Deschutes county Republicans dinner at the Bend Elks Club.
After PRO5’s successes in Deschutes county in 2022, their radio meetings become more and more intertwined with local Republican party business. On 12 March 2023, Brian Gatley of Redmond told the Redmond “Little Group of Patriots” radio meeting that “I was down in Bend all afternoon for the [Deschutes Republican Party] meeting,”.
PRO5 member Scott Stuart was elected chair of the Deschutes Republicans after their success in fielding PCP candidates in 2022.
Later in the same meeting, another member, Redmond’s LoriLark McBride, suggested a high level of internal organization in PRO5 directed at the capture of the local Republican apparatus.
“John [McBride] and I attended the PCP training and it was great.”
Both McBrides later stood for election in Deschutes county precinct 17.
I forget who or where I got this from. But the video on the page clearly shows the violence at the protest for Palestinian rights was caused not by the students, but by supporters of Israel. It has been reported that some of these outside agitators were funded by right wing dark money big donors. Warning the video shows brutal horrifying attacks / assaults on students with weapons, chemical sprays, and anything they could, often a bunch would single out one protester and beat that person to the ground. I will post the article but you will have to go to the link to see the videos and lots of pictures. Also please note that the college security and police simply stood by and let the protestors be attacked. So much for serve and protect. Hugs. Scottie
A young man in a white plastic mask beats a pro-Palestinian protester. Another in a maroon hoodie strikes a protester with a pole. A local instigator pushes down barricades.
Law enforcement stood by for hours as counterprotesters attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA on April 30, which erupted into the worst violence stemming from the ongoing college protests around the country over Israel’s war in Gaza.
While a criminal investigation is underway into the assaults that occurred at UCLA, the identities of the most aggressive counterprotesters have gone largely unknown. A CNN review of footage, social media posts, and interviews found that some of the most dramatic attacks caught on camera that night were committed by people outside UCLA – not the university students and faculty who were eventually arrested.
Many at the scene appeared dedicated to the pro-Israel cause, according to social media and their own words that night. The violent counterprotesters identified by CNN, which included an aspiring screenwriter and film producer and a local high school student – were joined by unlikely allies, several of whom are known throughout southern California for frequenting and disrupting a variety of protests and public gatherings.
The young man sporting the white mask and a white hoodie in widely shared video clips is Edan On, a local 18-year-old high school senior, his mother confirmed to CNN, though she later said he denies being at UCLA. Video shows On joining the counterprotesters while waving a long white pole. At one point, he strikes a pro-Palestinian protester with the pole, and appears to continue to strike him even when he was down, as fellow counterprotesters piled on.
“Edan went to bully the Palestinian students in the tents at UCLA and played the song that they played to the Nukhba terrorists in prison!” his mother boasted in Hebrew on Facebook, referencing Hamas. She circled an image of him that had been broadcast on the local news.
An image from Fox 11 Los Angeles posted on Facebook by Sharon On-Siboni shows her son, Edan On, with a white hoodie throwing an object into the encampment created by pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA. On-Siboni highlighted the image.
From Fox 11
“He is all over the news channels,” his mother wrote in a now-deleted post.
Some counterprotesters had been spotted on campus days earlier, drawn by a high-profile pro-Israel rally as inflammatory videos and claims rapidly spread across social media.
Many at the scene Tuesday hid their faces behind masks and scarves. Some attackers sprayed protesters with chemical irritants, hit them with wooden boards, punched and kicked them and shot fireworks into the crowd of students and supporters huddled behind umbrellas and wooden planks, attempting to stay safe. For hours, they sought to pull away pieces of the barrier, scooping up fallen wooden planks and poles to use as makeshift weapons, lunging toward pro-Palestinian protesters who emerged from the camp to protect it from being breached.
Video footage shows the young man in a white hoodie, identified as Edan On, striking at the barrier around the pro-Palestinian encampment. William Gude
In this still taken from a video posted on social media, Edan On removes his mask.
From Social Media
On, a local high school senior, was captured on video striking a pro-Palestinian protester with a pole.
From Social Media
As protesters chanted, “We’re not leaving” from the encampment, some counterprotesters shouted back, “You are terrorists, you are terrorists!”
Video footage shows that some counterprotesters instigated the fighting, while others did little to intervene. Then police did little as a large group of counterprotesters calmy walked away, leaving behind bloody, bruised students and other protesters.
The Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol referred all questions about the incident to the UCLA Police Department, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Law enforcement did not track injuries from the attack. But according to the encampment’s organizers, more than 150 students “were assaulted with pepper spray and bear mace,” and at least 25 protesters ended up being transported to local emergency rooms to receive treatment for injuries including fractures, severe lacerations and chemical-induced injuries.
“I actually thought someone would get killed,” said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s Director Emeritus, who called 911 around midnight as he watched the violence on live TV. “They came to beat people up.”
The next day, Hillel at UCLA posted an open letter from student leaders denouncing what it called “fringe members of the off-campus Jewish community” who did not represent “the estimated 3,000 Jewish Bruins at UCLA.”
“We cannot have a clearer ask for the off-campus Jewish community: stay off our campus,” it stated. “Your actions are harming Jewish students.”
‘You guys are about to get f—ed up’
In one of the more dramatic videos of the night, a protester wearing the colors of the Palestinian flag underneath an LA Kings jersey was knocked to the ground and beaten by multiple counterprotesters as he guarded the encampment.
The footage appears to show Edan On, in the white hoodie, and others striking at a pro-Palestinian protester on the ground. Key News Network
One of those assailants was On, who rushed into the middle of the fray with his pole. When CNN showed On’s mother a video of him attacking the protester, she said Edan, who she confirmed is a senior at Beverly Hills High School, was only defending himself.His mother – who previously described a smaller group of UCLA students protesting the war last year as “human animals” on social media – said dozens of his schoolmates had also gone to campus on the 30th and that her son intends to join the Israel Defense Forces.
The school district said federal law prohibits sharing information about students, including confirming their identities. On could not be reached for comment directly. When CNN contacted On’s mother for an interview with him, she replied that her son was in Israel and that he claimed he wasn’t at UCLA despite her earlier confirmation.
The man in the LA Kings jersey was ultimately dragged into a group of counterprotesters and kicked by an aspiring Los Angeles screenwriter and producer who CNN identified as Malachi Marlan-Librett, according to a review of social media photos, footage from the protest and interviews with multiple people who knew him. According to his LinkedIn, he graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2019 and attended a UCLA professional film and television program the following year.
A man in a maroon hoodie joined Marlan-Librett in dragging the protester into the mob.
A pro-Palestinian demonstrator is beaten by counterprotesters attacking a pro-Palestinian encampment set up at UCLA’s campus. The man in the maroon hoodie is among the attackers, which include Malachi Marlan-Librett (beige cap) to his right.
Etienne Laurent/AFP/Getty Images
A counterprotester, identified by CNN as Malachi Marlan-Librett, pushes a pro-Palestinian protester in the barrier of the UCLA encampment.
Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Marlan-Librett is seen throwing the bottom of a broom at a pro-Palestinian protester. William Gude
The protester was later seen in a video receiving treatment for a bloody head injury at the encampment. Marlan-Librett and the man in the maroon hoodie, along with other counterprotesters, such as an unmasked man wearing a red bandana around his neck, were seen committing multiple acts of violence throughout the night.
They became prime targets for online researchers who told CNN they had created internal nicknames such as #UCLARedBandana, #UCLANeffHat and #UCLAMaroonHoodie as they attempted to identify them.
In one violent episode captured on video, Marlan-Librett is seen carrying the end of a broom in his hand, using it to strike a protester in the head before kicking him. Even after the protester retreats, Marlan-Librett sneaks up on him from behind and strikes him in the head once again. Marlan-Librett didn’t respond to calls and texts from CNN.
In another video, the man in the maroon hoodie runs toward the encampment yelling, “You guys are about to get f**ked up.” In the over 3-hour-long livestream, the young man is in the thick of the scrum and can be seen hitting another man with a pole before arming counterprotesters with wood planks. The man could be heard yelling at protesters, “F**k you, f**king terrorists,” then, “The score is 30,000” – a reference to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza.
Journalist Dolores Quintana is pepper-sprayed by the man in the maroon hoodie and other counterprotesters. William Gude
Just minutes earlier, the man pepper-sprayed a journalist in the face, while she was filming the crowd. “I had to walk off because I literally could not see anything,” the local journalist, Dolores Quintana, told CNN. “And it was getting in my mouth. And so, I was starting to choke.”
She said a volunteer came out of the encampment to wash out her eyes with water and saline. Quintana took a selfie when she could open her eyes again. In the photo, her face was drenched and pale, with red blotches on her forehead.
“This was the worst situation I ever found myself in as a journalist,” she said. “I was afraid they were going to kill somebody.”
Dolores Quintana pictured shortly after being pepper-sprayed while covering the protests at UCLA in early May.
Dolores Quintana
Local provocateurs in the fray
According to multiple acquaintances of the man in the maroon hoodie, he attended Los Angeles Valley College with his brother. Both brothers were enrolled at USC in the fall 2023 semester for a couple weeks before disenrolling, according to the school.
CNN could not reach the man in the maroon hoodie, and he did not have any apparent connection to UCLA.
Neither did Tom Bibiyan, a 42-year-old who was once a local Green Party official. Bibiyan was stabbed at a KKK rally where he was a counter-protester in 2016 and has since become an ardent Trump supporter. His colorful Instagram page is a mix of right-wing memes, numerous posts defending famous men against sexual assault allegations and pro-Israel content.
Video footage shows Bibiyan among those at the front line of people rushing the encampment in an attempt to remove protective metal barriers, as campus security guards watched the violence unfold.
Tom Bibiyan is seen throwing a water bottle at a protester. William Gude
Tom Bibiyan is seen rushing the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA. William Gude
“The moment we rushed the terrorist encampment last night at ucla to take it apart,” he captioned a video he posted to Instagram. “F**k them kids,” he said in a separate post, which has since been deleted.
A CNN journalist reached Bibiyan outside his home, wearing the same jacket he had worn at UCLA, but he refused to say why he had taken part in the violence. “You’re being a little rude, and I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave,” he said.
Other older men spotted among the mob looked familiar to local public school mom Angie Givant as she followed what happened that Tuesday night on social media: a group of right-wing provocateurs who she’d seen protesting LGBTQ rights in public schools at school board and city council meetings around Los Angeles.
“As soon as there were rumors that, you know, things were going to go down at UCLA, there was a mobilization of very familiar reactionary extremists,” she told CNN.
One of the older men, Narek Palyan, joined the group of counterprotesters despite having posted anti-Jewish tropes on his social media accounts. Palyan, who didn’t appear to engage in the violence, claimed to CNN he has a child at UCLA, though a student was not seen accompanying him that night. “I was definitely keeping the peace, at least trying to,” he said.
Student journalists attacked
UCLA junior and student journalist Catherine Hamilton said that when a firework landed a few feet away from where she was standing and she saw the men approaching in masks, it was clear to her that they were about to do something they didn’t want to be recognized for.
“In that moment when that firework went off and started ringing in my ears, I was like, something very bad is going to happen on this campus,” she said.
When the police finally arrived hours later to break up the chaos, Hamilton and her colleagues regrouped to head back to their newsroom. As they walked past a line of cops and along a well-lit street in the center of campus, just before 3:30 am, she says they were encircled by a small group of counterprotesters mainly dressed in black. She told CNN the man leading the group was someone whom she immediately recognized. He was a counterprotester who had previously verbally harassed her and taken a photo of her press badge, she said.
Within seconds, they sprayed the student journalists with a type of mace or pepper spray and flashed lights in their faces. As she tried to get away, Hamilton said, she was repeatedly struck in the chest and abdomen.
One of the journalists confronted the attackers and shoved one before he was pummeled to the ground and beaten, according to video footage of the incident.
‘I was expecting us to start working on an obituary’
The day after the attack, UCLA’s chancellor called the events “a dark chapter” in the school’s history that “has shaken our campus to its core.”
A parent who was at the encampment with their child, a UCLA student, also described the night as feeling like “a civil war movie” with embers raining down and the wounded being treated all around. The parent said they were frantic to find help, calling UCLA campus police six times in a row.
One fourth-year UCLA student – who requested anonymity due to safety concerns – told CNN he was hit in the corner of his forehead with a traffic cone. Minutes later, video captured a counterprotester smashing a wooden plank into the back of his head.
With two deep cuts on his head, he said he rushed to the hospital and ultimately received 14 staples and three stitches for the injuries.
The violence directed at the protesters and his access to medical treatment reminded him of why they had set up the encampment in the first place, trying to raise awareness about the mass deaths and destruction from Israel’s war in Gaza, and calling for the university to divest from any financial ties with Israel. “I had the privilege of going to a hospital,” he said. “In Gaza, there are zero fully functioning hospitals.”
Thistle Boosinger, a 23-year-old member of the encampment who is not a UCLA student, had her hand smashed the night of the violence. She described how her assailant took a piece of wood above his head before slamming it down on her hand. “At first, I just screamed,” she said. “And then after like five minutes where my adrenaline wore off, it was so extremely painful.”
Thistle Boosinger, a 23-year-old member of the encampment, had her hand smashed the night of the violence. Boosinger requested CNN obscure a portion of this image over privacy concerns following recent developments.
Courtesy Thistle Boosinger
In a video call, Boosinger held up her hand wrapped in gauze and described her injury. “My bone is broken totally in half below my knuckle … [which is] shattered into a bunch of pieces and jumbled up.”
Dylan Kupsh, a UCLA graduate student, said he linked arms with other protesters in an attempt to defend the encampment and keep people safe. “We were … trying to keep the barricade wall up because that was literally protecting our lives,” Kupsh said. It wasn’t long before he was pepper sprayed, forcing him to seek medical treatment as the attacks continued.
Kupsh and others still wonder what would have happened had the encampment been breached that night.
“I hate to say it,” said Catherine Hamilton, the student journalist, “but I was expecting us to start working on an obituary the next day because I thought something that serious would happen to the students in the encampment.”
Do you have information to share about the attack at UCLA? Email us at watchdog@cnn.com.
CNN’s Audrey Ash, Isabelle Chapman, Scott Glover and Curt Devine contributed to this story.
Ammon Bundy poses in Emmett, Idaho in 2018.
Photograph: Kelsey Grey/AP————————————————————————————–
11 minute read
Scottie's Playtime 