Running Trump's Extortion Racket

FINALLY, WE KNOW. We know the going rate major American universities must pay to free themselves from the onerous burden of being blackmailed by the Trump administration. We know because Columbia University, among the crown jewels of Ivy League academia, has agreed to pay Trump and his gangster associates, who protect themslves from legal exposure by pretending to be the United States government, the grand total of two hundred million dollars. Trump's extortion scheme, which can properly be described as a sort of street style protection racket, has thereby undergone a succcessful trial run, and its instigators are doubtless now infused with confidence that it will work as neatly at every turn in the future, near and far. There are, after all, more than three thousand colleges and universities in the United States of Avarice; seemingly easy marks, ripe for the taking. All this, merely by taking full advantage of current events. The ongoing genocide in Palestinian GAZA, cleverly renamed and marketed as a "war" against the terrorist organization Hamas, turns out to be a veritable gold mine of investment opportunities. We might next expect Trump & Sons to incorporate, go public, sell shares, and proceed to launch similar legal attacks agaisnt any and all other institutions of higher learning and beehives of social protest, from Division I on down. The only remaining question to be answered will be the share value of the IPO. The narrative is this. College students, who are amost always more aware of social injusice and willing to do something about it than your average less educated American, have perceptively noticed that what has often been called a "war" is actually nothing other than a genocide. And all across America's fruited plain in the land of liberty they have been and are still taking to the campus commons, holding signs, shouting protest chants, calling attention to the almost unprecedented brutality of the nation of Israel in its obvious design to eliminate from the heavily blemished face of the Earth the Palestinian people, fellow Semites. The usual protest scenario. ("Semites" are not necessarily Jews. They are defined as people whose ancestors originated in the Arabian peninsula. This includes Arabs, in Palestine and elsewhere.) At dear old Columbia, they went a bit far. Students entered the library, not to study, but to stage a "sit in", after the fashion of their anti-Viet Nam War protestor grand paresnt, who, one might conjecture, are even now grinning through the haze of marijuana smoke. Either that, or resting comfortably in their graves, without turning over even once within their permanent digs. The police were called, altercations ensued, suspensions and expulsions meted out, and all the rest. History, paradigmatically if not in fact, repeating itself. Into the fray injects itself the Trump adminstration, seizing the day, leveling charges of institutional "anti-Semitism", the usual tired, well worn rot. Pay now or pay later. Of note here is the simple fact that opposition to a nation state, a military power armed with nuclear weapons, pursiung a policy of genocidal ethnic cleansing, does not, repeat, does not, constitute "anti-Semitism. But so what? For Trump & Associates, Ltd, the Columbia U. on campus dissent is nothing less than a "target of opportunity". What it is is blatant blackmail, outright extortion. And as of now, the going rate is a cool two hundred mil. Look for the price to go up. Hallowed Harvard is under Trump's gun, locked and loaded. Others will soon follow. When the fleecing of the Ivy League is complete, look for the ice cold gangsters to move on to the Big Ten, or perhaps the Southeastern conference. Every univesrity within earshot which dares question the moral implications of genocide is, as we say, good for the taking.