UC Berkeley recently began clearing an area of land known as "People's Park" for the development of new student housing. On Wednesday, plans for that housing ground to a halt following violent protests by far-left rioters. According to far-left advocacy group Defend People's Park, the area where new student housing is being developed was occupied by a number of homeless people.

The group wrote in a June 9 Facebook post:

"UC Berkeley is now saying that 'camping' in the park is illegal. This means that no one living there and no tent or structure has the right to privacy - meaning cops or cleaners can throw away anything without any recourse whatsoever."

The park, which is owned by the school, was cleared on Tuesday and surrounded by fencing.

I don't know if Americans were ever fiscally responsible, if they ever had a time when saving was valued, where you didn't borrow for consumption, and where low-quality throwaway goods and products were avoided, but if they did experience such a period in their history, it was brief. Twenty years before Elmer Wheeler's discovery of sizzle, Bernays and his friends had already instilled the equally important concept of spending tomorrow's money today. The process began with Layaway plans, then moved to 'Pay as you Go', 'No money Down', 'Buy Now, Pay Later', and other easy credit schemes. Television ads displayed beautiful people enjoying their new home and car, kitchen appliances and furniture, TV, clothing and vacations, and not having to pay for them today. The marketers hired Bernays' psychologists to create a tactical plan to change American values from saving to perpetual consumption, and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. US marketers conceived and created a 'throw-away' society, where appearance was more important than substance, where quality was sacrificed for fashion. US automakers changed the entire external appearance of their models each year, converting transportation into fashion accessory with advertising campaigns that made people ashamed of driving last year's car. This is so true that since the 1950s, one of the largest 'fashion events' of the year was the unveiling by American auto manufacturers of their new models. There was never any attention paid to engineering or quality; it was all superficial consumerism.

Most Americans are too young to realise that their throwaway society is a recent development. It was not so long ago that quality and durability were important characteristics of any purchase, because people weren't rich enough to buy shoddy products requiring repeated replacement. Consumer goods were meant to last a lifetime - and many did. Many toys were expected to last for generations, and often did. As a child, I played with toys that were handed down from my grandfather. Early in his marriage, my father purchased a set of kitchen pots for my mother, for which he paid nearly two month's salary. My mother died at 91 years of age, and those pots still looked as new as when they were purchased. It was Bernays and his marketing people, the evangelisers of capitalism, who found a better way to make more money faster. Rather than selling you one good item and losing you as a customer forever (since it would never need replacement), they began lowering the quality, making and selling increasingly cheaper products that would soon fail and require replacement. This way, American manufacturers would have high profits and permanent repeat customers from a wasteful disposable society.

American manufacturers had developed the processes of large-scale mass production to serve the nation's war machine, but after the war these massive factories would remain mostly idle. The solution of Lippman and Bernays was to engineer one of the greatest shifts in social values the world has ever seen, by re-defining the concept of "need" in the public mind to coincide with every product American factories could make. They employed their wartime propaganda methods to indoctrinate the American people with a need to purchase everything possible, in their pursuit of "a higher living standard".

"Bernays began the process of selling not so much products as emotion itself. In psychologically linking the act of consumption to feeling free, happy, empowered, and confident, he tied notions of identity and self to items that could be purchased." This was the true birth of consumerism, and why it existed (and exists) only in the US. America evolved into a 'shop-until-you-drop' throwaway economy, based on easy credit and superficiality. In a few decades, Americans went from 'thrift' to 'spendthrift'.

Have you ever seen a teacher who is just a little too interested in getting kids to talk about their sexuality? Or a government bureaucrat seemingly obsessed with pushing LGBT ideology into schools?

Then you've likely encountered what James Lindsay, a cultural commentator and frequent critic of LGBT activists, calls a "groomer."

Lindsay, 43, is co-author of the book Cynical Theories, which highlights the decline in academic rigor in academia, as well as the rise of postmodernism. Lindsay, who lives in Tennessee, has been one of the loudest voices online exposing how activists are foisting LGBT ideology on unwitting children.

The combination of extreme drought and the spiralling cost of feed has put Portugal's livestock producers in a desperate situation. Many are shutting down operations altogether, others are drastically 'cutting back on heads of cattle' - meaning animals are being killed because their owners simply cannot afford to feed them. The costs of this drastic reduction "will reflect on consumers" eventually, explain reports, as the cost of meat will increase further than it already has.

Schools and hospitals used as military bases by Ukrainian forces

'We have no say in what the military does, but we pay the price' - resident in city of Bakhmut

'Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law' - Agnès Callamard

The Ukrainian military has endangered Ukrainian civilians by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in residential areas - including in schools and hospitals - as it has sought to repel the Russian invasion, Amnesty International said today.

Ukraine's tactics have violated international humanitarian law as they've turned civilian objects into military targets. The ensuing Russian strikes in populated areas have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure.

Not every Russian attack documented by Amnesty has followed this pattern. In certain locations in which Amnesty concluded that Russia had committed war crimes - including in some areas of the city of Kharkiv - Amnesty did not find evidence of Ukrainian forces located in civilian areas unlawfully targeted by the Russian military.

The deputy head of Taiwan defense ministry's research and development unit was found dead on Saturday morning in a hotel room, according to the official Central News Agency.

Ou Yang Li-hsing, 57, who was the deputy head of the military-owned National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST), was found dead in a hotel room in southern Taiwan on Saturday morning, CNA reported, adding that authorities were looking into the cause and circumstances of his death.

Authorities are currently saying that Ou Yang likely died of a heart attack and that the hotel room showed no sign of any 'intrusion.' His family said he had a history of heart disease and had a cardiac stent, according to police reports.

The Israel Defense Forces launched strikes on residential area in Gaza on Friday, in response to the alleged threat of assault by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). One of the group's top members was killed. Local officials also say that the IDF attack left several civilians dead and dozens injured.

Video footage shows smoke rising from a densely-packed residential area of the Palestinian enclave, after Israeli forces conducted airstrikes. In a statement, the IDF said that the attack was launched following "the direct threats posed by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza."

The mission was named 'Operation Breaking Dawn' by the IDF.

A Las Vegas vape store owner repeatedly stabbed a crook who frightened him by jumping over his counter during a botched robbery, according to video and the worker's account of the incident.

Video footage showed the brazen broad-daylight heist on Wednesday, in which Johnny Nguyen, owner of Smokestrom Smoke Shop, stabbed the unidentified assailant at least seven times before the robber yelled, "I'm dead" and fell to the ground.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officials told The Post that cops responded Wednesday afternoon to a robbery incident at the vape business but would not release further details.

Over at CNN the "hunt is on for new revenue" as the news network's "ratings plummet" and "profits slump" below nearly $1 billion.

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that CNN's yearly profitability is expected to decline to $956.8 according to projections from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

CNN's annual profits haven't sunk below $1 billion since 2016, the year Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election and subsequently became a prominent figure in their commentary. "Ratings are down from their Trump-era heights across cable news, but declines at CNN are particularly pronounced," the Times noted.

Breweries have already been facing higher costs for raw materials like aluminum and barley as a result of inflation.

Craft breweries across America have been on the front lines of businesses facing higher material costs because of inflation.

Now, many are confronting a shortage of a key ingredient: carbon dioxide, the gas that gives beer its crisp, effervescent taste.