Westerners love to whine about how tyrannical and authoritarian Iran's government is, but it's worth noting that the control Tehran exerts within its borders is a major reason US-Israeli efforts to turn the nation into a giant Libya have failed. That control exists to thwart precisely the type of existential foreign threat that Iran just thwarted. Were it not for that existential foreign threat, such control wouldn't be necessary. The US has openly admitted to deliberately fomenting the domestic unrest we saw in Iran earlier this year, and to attempting to arm insurgent factions. Those foreign threats were put down by precisely the "tyranny" you've seen western liberals and anarkiddies decrying in Iran all year. The fact that the US-Israeli war failed to achieve the government-toppling goals set out by Washington and Tel Aviv means that Iran was able to inhibit the visibility that US and Israeli intelligence agencies had into the nation, because you only fail to accomplish a military objective you think you can accomplish if your enemy is able to surprise you. Countering US and Israeli intelligence operations, rooting out US and Israeli intelligence assets, blocking US and Israeli propaganda from domestic consumption, and obstructing US and Israeli visibility into Tehran's government and military could only be achieved by a strong government that's willing exert forceful control over what goes on inside its own borders. Westerners like to point at the "authoritarianism" of the few remaining enemies of the US-centralized empire as though it proves that we're looking at a struggle between a beneficent and virtuous civilization and a bunch of evil tyrants, but really all it proves is that the only nations who are able to resist absorption into the imperial blob are the ones who are willing and able to exert control over what happens inside their borders. If the US and its allies weren't constantly working to subvert and topple all unabsorbed nations, this "authoritarianism" wouldn't be needed to resist it.

Dems are fine with nazis, just like they're fine with neocons and CIA.

If I ever ran for office I would run on a strict law and order platform. I would call for the prosecution of every single American traitor who served the IDF during the genocide in Gaza and Lebanon. We cannot live among these monsters

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People who say "Zionism is just the belief that Jews should have a homeland" are hilarious. Zionism isn't some abstraction; we can all see its material manifestations with our own eyes. We can all see that Zionism means genocide, apartheid, and nonstop wars and abuse. This isn't some kind of theoretical debate where we all get to have our own opinions about what Zionism is and what it entails. It's 2026, not 1890. The facts are in and the case is closed, kids. This is what Zionism is. This is the only Zionism in existence. What you see is what you get. And what you see is quantifiably one of the most evil things happening on our planet.

Israel is genocidal criminal entity who is hell-bent on erasing the real history of the Middle East - a precious world history which belongs to the region & humanity, all of us. Israel is destroying the natives histories because it undermines their imaginary Zionist narrative that the entire region is their property gifted to them by an estate agent they call god. Truly and disgusting. They must be stopped…

Jerry Seinfeld is trending because he's a fanatical genocidal Zionist who said "Palestine doesn't exist", so here's a reminder that when he was 39 he groomed a 17 year old and regularly picked her up at her high school, and lied about her actually being older

The human species has essentially been transformed into a giant profit-generating machine for corporations. Under capitalism, humanity exists to serve the interests of the corporation. We are all livestock; beasts of burden used to carry margin expansion forward from quarterly statement to quarterly statement. Enjoyment of life has no value other than the extent to which it can be used to increase the net worth of the shareholders. That’s why everyone’s so unhappy. We’re not living with purpose. We’re not working together to build a better world and a better future, we’re just pulling levers to turn gears to make the arrow line go up on the graph in the conference room. It’s a hollow, pointless way for people to live. It makes our whole culture vapid and soulless. Music is made to be as profitable as possible, which means giving it the broadest possible appeal using formulaic song structure calculated to cause a chemical response in the largest number of human brains. Movies are designed to draw the largest possible box office revenue at the lowest possible risk to studios and investors, often by just rehashing a movie that’s already proven successful in the past or by slapping together a story about an IP with pre-existing mass appeal. Food is made to be fast and addictive rather than nourishing. Healthy human connection has been commodified as social media intertwines with friendships and dating apps insert themselves into the development of romantic relationships. Human sexuality is being warped and twisted as internet porn normalizes violence and degradation for the maximum number of clicks. Attention and engagement have been monetized, creating an information ecosystem dominated by conflict and gossip designed to appeal to our baser instincts. Advertisement is injected into every possible corner of our waking sensory experience, with any available space where the eye might rest or the ear might listen being flooded with psychological manipulation compelling us to consume. They’ll start running commercials in our dreams the instant they have the technology to do so. You spend eight hours at the office working to generate corporate profits, then you come home and consume products to profit other corporations. You need your beer and snacks to unwind, your streaming services and social media to distract your mind from the stress of it all, your online clothing purchase to try to feel good about yourself, and your prescription drugs to get to sleep at night. People live their entire lives like this. And that’s those of us who are lucky enough to be living in the global north. In the global south you get wage slavery and exploitation with far more toil, far less relaxation time, and no cheap products made by impoverished workers on other continents with which to comfort yourself. All of humanity has been roped into this mess. And for what? To make the numbers in some bank accounts increase. To get some green arrows pointing upward on the stock exchange. To enable a few billionaires to buy islands and elections. All while destroying the biosphere we all depend on for survival. This, we are told, is the best possible system we could possibly be living under. I personally do not believe this is true. I personally believe we can have better. Those who benefit from this current arrangement are going to assure us it’s impossible and do everything they can to stop us from changing it, but we do have the means to reclaim the wealth, dignity and happiness that they have stolen from us. They built this whole machine on our backs. All we need to do is stand up.

Yesterday, I spoke out against data centers and AI layoffs at the Seattle City Council. Under mass pressure, the City Council passed a one-year moratorium on new hyperscale data centers. This is a victory for working people, but one year is far from enough. My independent socialist campaign for Congress is the only one in this election fighting for an end to hyperscale data centers, for democratic public ownership of all existing data centers, and for a public-sector living wage jobs guarantee, funded by taxing the rich, to counter the AI-related mass layoffs. #datacenter #socialist #independent #ai #freepalestine

This Cones of Dunshire video was played on the Jumbotron at PNC Park immediately prior to Tyler Calihan’s go-ahead homer

There is absolutely no reason to give Bari Weiss more power other than she says exactly what her billionaire owners want.

For some reason, the phrase “billionaires shouldn't exist” really pisses off a lot of people with $1,540 in their bank account.

BREAKING: Israeli settlers are burning Taybeh in occupied Palestine. A village that has stood for thousands of years. A place where Jesus once walked. Home to the oldest living Christian community in the world. And not a peep from Western mainstream media.

Really, Bernie? Two people just spoke out about US support for Israel during Senator Sanders' talk at the Press Club. Instead of saying, "I understand. your passion and we will get to that issue soon," Bernie said "Get her out of here."

The ‘Democrat’ Party is an ironic moniker; like calling the biggest guy on the block ‘Tiny.’ They haven’t had a real presidential primary since 2012. They spend more to knock Greens off the ballot in every single electoral cycle than Greens spend on campaigns. Authoritarian regimes across the globe invent bull$hit reasons to remove competitors from the ballot all the time. Dems are authoritarian antidemocratic fascists. Everyone who supports them needs to think about the moral ramifications of that.

There are basically a few ways to make a billion dollars. It’s either through monopolies, insider trading, political payoffs, fraud, inheritance, or wage theft. Nobody makes a billion dollars purely from hard work or saving money.

The role of the Democratic Party is to intentionally lose. This prescient message from 2024 breaks it down.

Jacobin magazine, the principal mouthpiece of the leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America, today released a hit piece on Amazon labor leader Chris Smalls, @Shut_downAmazon. It could be legit if Jacobin had had an honest critique of Smalls to clarify what class struggle unionist leaders should be doing. But the article is not that at all. It’s a hatchet job against a leading labor activist who has refused to toe the line of the DSA and the business unionist labor leaders who give cover to the so-called progressive Democrats and to the Democratic Party as a whole, despite shocking betrayals by them against working people. The crux of the real reason why Jacobin went after Smalls is contained in this sentence: “[Smalls] blames the two-party system for the state of the American labor movement…” Smalls is spot on about this and the need to break from the Democratic and Republican parties. We need a new party of the working class. The DSA leadership, on the other hand, sees giving cover to the Democratic Party as job number one. The Democratic Party is the party under whom the genocide in Gaza began and which engineered the breaking of the railroad workers’ strike — both under President Joe Biden. ALL Democrats in the House, including DSA star AOC voted to break the strike. The Democratic Party is one of the two most powerful capitalist parties in the world, and in no way represents working people or the oppressed. Business unionist labor leaders are those who have made peace with the capitalist system and are driven by protecting their careers, which means placating the bosses, not organizing the rank and file against the bosses to win substantive working-class victories. Refusing to fight the bosses also means aligning with the parties of the bosses, like the Democratic Party. The overwhelming majority of the labor leadership today is business unionist, with some crucial exceptions like Smalls. We need a reckoning in the labor movement. Brother Smalls has put his life on the line for the antiwar movement in solidarity with the Palestinia people against the Israeli state’s genocide bankrolled by both the Democratic and Republican parties. Smalls went on a Gaza aid flotilla carrying food, baby formula, diapers and medicine in the context of catastrophic levels of mass starvation in Gaza. The flotilla was attacked by the Israeli military, who physically assaulted Smalls, and kicked and choked him. In contrast, AOC has voted for the Iron Dome which is part of the Israeli state’s genocidal apparatus. For having the temerity to expose AOC and other self-described “progressive” politicians, Smalls is called “narcissistic” by Jacobin, a term the magazine’s editors were apparently forced to retract after they got huge amounts of flak on all social media. Personal attacks and character assassination like in this case are often used by the political establishment’s spokespeople as proxy for their real objections — in this case, the threat they feel from Smalls openly calling out the Democratic Party’s actual role. The only way of rebuilding a militant labor movement is to pose a concrete threat to both the Democratic and Republican parties, which in turn requires a challenge to the business unionist labor leadership. That is the basis on which I won the nation’s highest minimum wage and the Amazon Tax during the decade I was the sole socialist on the Seattle City Council. I am now running as an independent revolutionary socialist against genocidal Democrat Adam Smith. I am calling for an end to all military aid to Israel and an end to all weapons and tech for genocide and imperialist war. kshamasawant.org

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