Rest in peace, comrade.

For those who haven't read or seen Parenti speak, I highly recommend both the "Yellow Parenti" Speech and Blackshirts and Reds | Audiobook both litanies against anti-communist mythos, an examination of the real successes and struggles in the USSR, and an analysis of fascism.

Michael Parenti's Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media has always been better than Manufacturing Consent. Considering Chomsky's appearance in the Epstein files as being good friends with billionaire pedophiles, On Chomsky is also a fantastic read for why the left should reject him.

Parenti has turned countless westerners into Marxists, and was vital in my own journey to the left. May we carry on his legacy.

DIS HORSE IN MY ROOM RN

Poland intends to further increase its defence spending this year amid growing concerns over Russia, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said in a policy address to parliament on Thursday.

Germany has deported 20 people to Afghanistan on what was the first flight directly agreed with the Taliban since the militants' return to power in 2021

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51415047

Borge Brende, the president and CEO of the World Economic Forum, which organises the annual Davos summit, announced his resignation on Thursday, weeks after the forum launched an independent investigation into his links with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Federal Council writes that it has no other choice than to apply trade restrictions on Ukraine in addition to Russia. The principle of equal treatment under the neutrality law obliges Switzerland to treat both parties to an international armed conflict equally with regard to the export and transit of war-related goods.

Ultimately, power in the twenty-first century rests on complex credibility, the product of interaction between material capability, narrative consistency and perceived legitimacy in the use of force. If the United States initiates a war it cannot decisively conclude, fails to guarantee key trade routes for its allies and exports economic instability to the global system, that credibility erodes cumulatively. Partners seek to diversify alliances; competitors test limits with greater audacity; the centre no longer holds. The central issue is not immediate military capacity but the aggregate effect on America’s relative position within an international system that is no longer unipolar, where power is assessed not only by the capacity to destroy but by the aptitude to produce a stable and predictable order.

The conclusion is more nuanced than often presented, yet no less consequential. The principal risk to American influence derives not solely from Iranian capabilities but from underestimating a state that has made strategic patience and resilience the core of its grammar of international action. Any decision to confront Tehran militarily would not constitute a mere tactical miscalculation but a conscious strategic wager against a system designed precisely to absorb shocks, impose cumulative costs and preserve a regional equilibrium that, though unfavourable to Washington, remains functional and possesses its own stabilising logics. It is a wager against the adversary’s very nature, a particularly hazardous choice when that adversary has built its political identity around survival under persistent and asymmetric pressure.

The most likely outcome would not be immediate catastrophe for either side but a prolonged sequence of attritional pressures — gradual, systemic and difficult to reverse — that would ultimately test America’s credibility, strategic focus and operational reach.

This is not ideology but a pre-emptive strategic autopsy: an exercise in structural foresight intended to understand how a decision that is technically feasible — even tactically straightforward — may accelerate geopolitical and economic dynamics that ultimately redefine the balance of power it sought to preserve, shifting it in unforeseen and unfavourable directions. Prudence, clarity in planning, accurate risk perception and the management of conflict over time are variables that far exceed the mere sum of military capabilities or force deployments.

In this sense, Iran’s strategy is articulated around the logic of protracted resistance, in which patience and operational consistency become central instruments for sustaining relative stability under extreme external pressure.

The dilemma for Washington, therefore, is not binary between war and peace, but between a conflict that can be maintained on its own terms and one that, once initiated, immediately redefines the rules against it, transforming strengths into liabilities and initiative into a trap of escalating commitment. In this contemporary paradox, the supreme exercise of power may lie not in the demonstration of force but in the disciplined capacity to recognise and avoid a self-generated strategic trap, preserving resources and attention for the challenges that truly shape the horizon of the twenty-first century.

No bro this US war in the middle east will be completely different, bro. See, this time the regime we’re trying to get rid of is REALLY BAD!

No no, this is nothing like all those other times. This time military interventionism to topple an oil-rich government in west Asia will lead to peace and democracy. Our soldiers will be greeted as liberators!

You don’t understand, bro. This time the government and the media are telling us the truth! This time the regime really IS committing mass atrocities and they really ARE trying to build weapons of mass destruction.

I know you think this will be a disaster like all those other US military interventions in the region, but you see, unlike all those other times, this time there are many foreign policy analysts from highly respected think tanks and mass media outlets assuring us that it will go perfectly fine.

Russia’s only domestic producer of optical fiber has been offline since May 2025 following Ukrainian attacks, industry officials told the Vedomosti business daily on Thursday.

The halted operations have left Russia fully dependent on Chinese supplies for a key component for telecommunications networks and military drone systems.

The plant, operated by Optic Fiber Systems in the city of Saransk, was damaged in a series of Ukrainian strikes in April-May 2025 and has yet to resume operations, Leonid Konik, CEO of telecoms consultancy ComNews Group, told Vedomosti.

Before the shutdown, the facility produced about 4 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) of optical fiber annually, supplying roughly 20 Russian cable manufacturers that used the material to produce fiber-optic cables.

Those companies now rely entirely on imports from China.

Chinese suppliers have meanwhile hiked prices for Russian buyers since the start of 2026, representatives of cable makers Evrokabel-1 and Incab, as well as major backbone operator TransTelecom, told Vedomosti.

...

Web archive link

This is post is really wtf?

(Tinfoil hat on) Would be interesting to do an investigation on what the app is doing other than allowing you to register if they are insisting so much on having people install it.

In short:

A spokesperson for Jacinda Ardern says the former New Zealand prime minister and her family are moving to Australia.

Dame Jacinda had been living in the US and working for Harvard University.

It comes after media reports saying the former PM and her husband had been looking at properties for sale in Sydney.

Stolen from r/marxism_memes

• 1936: The Rights the U.S. Still Won't Guarantee - Lady Izdihar (3 min 51 sex)

• Constitution of the Soviet Union - 8th All-Union Congress of Soviets

• This Soviet World / (Audiobook) - Anna Louise Strong (1936)

Canada and South Korea have signed a new defence agreement, roughly a month after Prime Minister Mark Carney urged middle powers to band together in the face of "great power" economic coercion.

Following negotiations that concluded in October, the two countries signed a deal Wednesday related to the exchange and protection of classified military and defence information.

In October, Ottawa said the agreement would be a legal basis to improve collaboration on everything from defence procurement and industrial security to research.

At the meeting Wednesday, the countries also agreed to updating their strategic partnership to reflect current geopolitical realities and begin negotiations on a defence cooperation agreement, including a legal framework for the cooperation of the countries' military forces.

For they are not deceived by semen

New York City offers a contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Border Patrol, and the Israeli Defense Forces millions of dollars in rent and construction subsidies, according to leases obtained by Drop Site through a Freedom of Information Law request.

Incentives offered by the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Crye Precision contrast with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s policy positions. Earlier this month, Mamdani issued an executive order reaffirming the city’s “sanctuary” status and restricting local agencies from collaborating with federal immigration enforcement. The mayor also campaigned extensively against the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

The company currently holds three leases for spaces in the Brooklyn Navy Yard complex that were signed in 2012, 2019, and 2022. The leases range in size from 8,000 to 85,000 square feet, in terms of five to 20 years, with options to renew.

In response to Crye Precision’s military and DHS contracts, local community members organizing under the banner of Demilitarize Brooklyn Navy Yard have been pushing the complex to evict the company, as well as Easy Aerial, another military contractor that provides drones to the Israeli military and DHS. Federal contracts indicate that both Easy Aerial and Crye Precision have additional facilities in New Jersey.

Earlier this month, the Navy Yard’s board met some of the activists’ demands and declined to renew the lease of Easy Aerial.

Stolen from r/Marxism_memes

Shah Alam had been in the Erie County Holding Center since February 2025 after being arrested by Buffalo police. On February 15 last year, he had been out for a walk in his neighborhood and had been using a curtain rod he purchased as a walking stick.

Nearly blind and with no ability to speak English, Shah Alam got lost and ended up on the porch of a woman’s home as she was letting her dog out, according to Macaluso. Shah Alam is completely blind in one eye and can only see with blurry vision for several feet in the other, according to Macaluso.

The woman called police, Macaluso said. When Shah Alam did not follow police commands to drop his curtain rod, they Tasered and beat him, then arrested him, Macaluso said. The officers suffered minor injuries in the scuffle, he said.

A spokesperson for Border Patrol, in a statement Wednesday evening, said after agents determined Shah Alam was not supposed to be in their custody, they “offered him a courtesy ride, which he chose to accept to a coffee shop.” That Tim Hortons, the spokesperson said, was “determined to be a warm, safe location near his last known address, rather than be released directly from the Border Patrol station.”

Agents, however, did not notify Macaluso or Shah Alam’s family of his release to the coffee shop. Macaluso previously told Investigative Post he expected Shah Alam to be taken to the ICE detention center in Batavia and that his client would be released from there.