Links - 26th September 2026 (2 - General Wokeness [including Dolly Parton])

palmer on X - "More people have come out with stories about how Dolly Parton impacted their lives in 3 hours than Charlie Kirk did or ever will. Never pays to he hateful bigot!"
Left wingers are so hateful

Meme - Iconic Weird Guy: "This is so wild, I haven't seen a single person on the right say anything bad about Dolly Parton, only people on the left, interesting"
rosie @tayvseal: "the left really needs to pack up this performative bullshit before 2028 because who the fuck does this benefit?"
More Luigis Needed: "Did Dolly Parton ever say anything about Palestine or was that beyond her reach"
ISRAEL DID IT: "She couldn't see beyond her tits..... like most celebrities"
Of course, left wingers are pretending either that no one is bashing her because she was a good person or that MAGA are bashing her (I've seen more left than right wing criticism of her)

Meme - ultras for sana @sanareplyguy: "an evil, evil woman. that's all i have to say."
"Dolly Parton, Dead at 80, Spent Decades Supporting US Troops and Veterans"
"Dolly Parton's 'all-American heart': How country icon forged special bond with US military"

Meme - Mark Ashton @MarkAshton_7: "The left ladies and gentlemen! This about the sad passing of Dolly Parton who was one of the most generous, kind and happy people ever. They are nothing but unhinged, disrespectful, lowlife maggots."
GenericPerson @7Generic2: "Pretty sure she was a Trumper. Nothing of value was lost."
Weird. Many left wingers claimed that she was universally loved because she wasn't a piece of shit like Charlie Kirk. They couldn't even keep their hatred to themselves for even one day

Meme - night jar @nocturnalbottle: "it doesn't matter if dolly parton was a good person or if she donated $500 million of books for poor kids. She died with $600 million in assets, as a 35% stakeholder in a giant theme park that makes hundreds of millions per yr off the exploitation of the working class"

Meme - More Luigis Needed @LisaA311: "Did Dolly Parton ever say anything about Palestine or was that beyond her reach
I stopped having celebrity heroes a long time ago and it has never been a regret"
Ben Monroe @BenMonroe1: "I asked Al, seems she stayed away from speaking about genocides in general. Only exception is speaking out in favor of Ukraine's right to live. She was pro-LGBT rights and BLM. Also spoke about loving each other and treating people decently."
More Luigis Needed @LisaA311: "Why Ukraine and not Palestine"

Meme - kradd @suspiciouscrane: "Imagine being Palestinian and you log on twitter and everybody's mourning their hero who's biggest accomplishment is giving books to kids in a country that bombs you"
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "Dolly Parton's Imagination Library operates in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and Republic of Ireland, not Israel."

Meme - Vocal Politics: "Behind the rhinestones, wigs and carefully cultivated image of kindness, Dolly Parton’s public record tells a more complicated story. It includes solidarity with US troops during the w-rs in Iraq and Afghanistan, a patriotic album released as the US invaded Iraq, and financial support for a campaign promoting the Israeli occupation and honoring its soldiers. Yet as Palestinians in G-za endured g-n-cide and d-struction, her public record offered no comparable solidarity. ￭ Meanwhile, questions have been raised about labor record behind Dollywood, where seasonal, low-paid service jobs replaced better-paid industrial work for many in the region, alongside longstanding criticism of Dixie Stampede’s sanitized portrayal of the US Civil War and sl-very. Charity may define part of Parton’s legacy, but it does not erase the politics, power structures and silences that accompanied it. #VPol"

Ranthony on X - "Took Dolly Partons passing for everyone to realize these are performative misanthrope dweebs and not revolutionaries who care about anyone"

Dolly Parton’s co-star Ricky Schroder sparks outrage over tribute - "Schroder shared a photo of himself with the late country music icon, writing in the caption: “I didnt agree with her advocating for Transgender & Covid Vaccine support…but Loved her anyway. Thank you for choosing me Dolly to be your Movie Daddy.”"
😉😘🎉 A on X - "So wait, the left can use Dolly to say the right is awful, but the right can't say she was great, even though we disagreed on some things?"

Peter Shrinks on X - "I read Rob Long's old piece on Dolly today, and it is worth reading: https:// commentary.org/articles/rob-long/the-beauty-parton/ I've been thinking about why her interviewers were so insistent on pinning her to their political positions. It comes down, I think, to tribalism. The left is tribal. The left ghosts people who are not in their tribe, even people who should be loved ones get the no-contact treatment if they aren't of the body, I mean, tribe. The left has to believe crazy things--cultish things--in order to remain in good standing with the tribe. The borders of those necessary beliefs keep shifting further away from rational thought every year. The left believes, as Krauthammer pointed out, that everyone else is evil. This goes beyond Krauthammer's famous: the right thinks the left are ignorant, the left thinks the right are evil. For the left, it is not enough to assign good things to their side (government is another word for things we do together, they are the empathetic and caring ones, they are anti-racist); they also have to assign every evil thing to anyone who disagrees. This is why everyone on the other side must, by definition, be racist fascists. I mean, come on, they're on the other side! So, when something like Sandy Hook happens, if you do not believe in the leftist solution of gun control, then you must not give a ---- that a lot of kids were killed: you are evil. (I had a friend on socials make this exact leap a day or two ago. If you are not in favor of their solution, you don't care that kids die.) If there are homeless everywhere and you don't believe that the solution is to spend $600,000 per person to house a few score of homeless, then you don't care about the homeless: you are evil. If you are critical of the current education system, then you must not want poor black and brown bodies (their nomenclature) to be educated: you are evil. If you don't believe in DEI preferences, you are evil. If you don't believe what the left believes, you must be a racist, sexist, National Socialist from Germany 1940: you are evil. So, getting back to the interviewers, they were trying to find out if Dolly was an acceptable person to like, if she were safely part of the tribe. If she turned out not to be, then they would have to hate her and ghost her. Remember, they are the good people."

N M P K on X - "Although she smartly insisted she was an entertainer and was not interested in making political statements, Dolly appeared to be a supporter of the President. She sent a televised birthday message to Trump in 1990 (long before his political career). She appeared onstage with 9 to 5 co-stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, who referenced the film’s line about a “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” in a way widely interpreted as aimed at Trump. Parton later said she did not want to be “dragged into” politics and was not surprised by her co-stars’ views, emphasizing that their opinions were not necessarily hers. The President's claim about the ballroom? Who knows?"
If you're not with the left, you're against them

Visiting Dolly Parton’s dinner show Dixie Stampede. - "Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede is the Lost Cause of the Confederacy meets Cirque du Soleil. It’s a lily-white kitsch extravaganza that play-acts the Civil War but never once mentions slavery. Instead, it romanticizes the old South, with generous portions of both corn on the cob and Southern belles festooned in Christmas lights."
Dolly Parton refuses to take a stance on many political issues. Should more people follow her lead? - "Parton's own sister, Stella Parton, has criticized Dolly for not calling herself a feminist and declining to speak out in support of the #MeToo movement. "I'm ashamed of my sister for keeping her mouth shut," Stella told the country music podcast Our Stories in February. "She can run it when it is about something else, but speak up about injustice, Dolly Parton. Speak up.""
Affairs? Drugs? You could ask Dolly Parton about anything and get a laugh. Just stay away from politics … | Dolly Parton | The Guardian - "Her apolitical stance seemed, to me, about protecting her career, her money. If you’re political, she said, “you’re gonna lose half your audience. I’ve got as many Democrats, as I do Republicans as fans, and I’m not going to insult any of them because I care about all of them.” It was the same reason she didn’t describe herself as a feminist, she said – she didn’t want to alienate men. I needled her (she remained good-humoured) because it seemed a cop-out – this was 2023, and life had become frightening and intolerable for many people. Tennessee, her home state, had not long banned abortion in almost all cases. At what point does silence, given her platform, start looking like complicity?"
This left winger claimed that random people on Twitter don't count. But even at least somewhat notable left wingers also criticised her

Trades Union Congress on X - "Reminder that Dolly Parton's 9 to 5 is a film about three women taking over an office and introducing free childcare, paid vacation, and flexible hours, resulting in a 20% increase in productivity."
Left wingers can't tell the difference between truth and fiction

Meme - Arty Trolls @ArtyTroll: "The left is LYING about Dolly Parton declining the Presidential Medal of Freedom"
"why did dolly parton decline the presidential medal of freedom twice?
Dolly Parton declined the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice during the Trump administration, according to her own account. She explained the reasons in a February 2021 interview on NBC's Today show. The first time, she said she could not accept because her husband, Carl Dean, was ill. The second time, the administration offered it again and she declined because she would not travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. Parton has long described herself as apolitical and said she avoids taking sides so she does not alienate fans. After the two Trump-era offers, the Biden administration also contacted her about the award. She said accepting it at that point would feel like "doing politics," adding that she does not work for awards and was not sure she even deserved the honor. She never received the medal from either administration. The story originates entirely from Parton's public comments; neither the Trump nor Biden White House issued a detailed public confirmation or contradiction of her account."

Thomas 🌸 on X - "Putting the left and right wing pipelines side by side is funny. You’ll have one person who radicalized bc their family couldn’t afford food and healthcare while the other radicalized bc the female warrior in their video game didn’t look like pornstar."
Thread by @memeticsisyphus on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "During the Ferguson riots, for a kid who attacked a police officer and tried to grab his gun, I was speaking with a white co-worker who lived in Ferguson. She was in tears recounting the mob moving past her families house talking about the flames they could see in fear they would have to escape somehow. As she was talking a black coworker came up looked her straight in the eyes and said “good.”
And let’s also not discount those “cringe” compilations. We called them cringe, we laughed at them, but they were endless examples of college students, professors, members of the media repeating insane conspiracies about how men, specifically white men, were evil. They denounced concepts like free speech and academic freedom, they perpetrated the rape hoaxes and the college campus scares. They’re the ones who say all men are rapists, all white people are racist, and it’s important to hire BIPOC and other marginalized communities (open discrimination). These people ruined lives and promised to do it again and again. Remember trigglypuff? She went viral for screaming at a conservative speaker to “keep your hate speech off our campus.” A horrible retrograde attitude to have as a university student, to denounce without giving a fair hearing. Well she moved on, she changed her name, she’s working on her PhD. She writes about fat phobia and prison abolition. Terrible ideas now being spread by the next generation of college professors. An entire power structure with open race and gender based contempt. You know, the thing you guys pretend to care about."

Meme - conny @BlvckJxsus: "gary indiana has been w/o power for 11 days. gary indiana is 76% Black. yet another example of environmental racism, its so fucking disgusting."
Readers added context: "The power outage was caused by severe storms on August 11, 2026, affecting Northwest Indiana and Northeast Illinois. Restoration in Gary was further delayed after utility crews were shot at on August 14, temporarily pausing work."
Clearly, white supremacists are travelling there to shoot work crews so black people will have no power for longer
Naturally, left wingers were blaming Trump

retard mode ✞ on X - "gary indiana not having power is an amazing story of diversity
>entire city council is black
>every electric company executive is black
>black residents can’t stop shooting at vehicles working to restore power
and they all blame racism for going without power for so long"
One cope to a truncated version of this tweet was that there was no proof, but in the full tweet there're photos of the city council and electric company executives

Threads - "Why do we have National Guard troops still wandering around DC and New Orleans when they can be in Gary, IN helping residents? Where is FEMA? The Federal Government is failing the American people."
Of course, if Trump sent in the National Guard without the Governor's request, they would be screeching about "fascism". Left wingers aren't serious people.

Tim Curry on X - "Ah the ‘is Rocky Horror problematic’ chat. Through a 2024 lens - of course it is. But babies, being gay was *illegal* in England 6 years before Rocky was first staged in ‘73. It was brave, bold & brilliant for its time. Look beyond the end of your own nose, just briefly. Please."

The secrecy surrounding Labour’s anti-Muslim hatred definition is chilling - "Who pressed “delete” on the evidence which led to the definition of “anti-Muslim hostility”? Billed as protecting Muslims from abuse while simultaneously respecting freedom of speech about religion, the credibility of Labour’s anti-Muslim hostility definition now lies in tatters. The definition was adopted in March after research by a five-strong Working Group on Anti-Muslim Hatred/Islamophobia Definition, appointed by Angela Rayner, and chaired by former Attorney General Dominic Grieve KC. It received evidence from interested parties between June 16 and July 20, 2025. That evidence will have been central to the working group’s deliberations and its ultimate recommendation to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Who did they speak to and what did they say? That is now a question we cannot receive an answer to. Nick Timothy MP has been informed that all the submissions to the working group have been destroyed. This is deeply concerning. It opens the possibility that evidence from extremist groups may have influenced the deliberations. Material from organisations linked to divisive Islamist groups overseas, or evidence that was flawed or simply wrong, could also have played a role... For political systems to have credibility, transparency matters... The deletion of working material also appears to be against departmental policy... If Labour feared a definition of anti-Muslim hostility without specific reference to the term “Islamophobia” would provoke a backlash from Muslim groups, there is little sign of such a campaign. This suggests activists may be content to try and make do with the new tools they have been afforded. Indeed as a Policy Exchange report in January entitled “A False Compromise” argued, the vagueness of the term “hostility” may cause even more problems than an Islamophobia definition. There will also be a central figure to tie this work together. Although Canada abandoned its experiment with a Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, Labour intends to name an “Anti-Muslim Hostility Tsar” and has been advertising for support staff. Andy Burnham is yet to show his hand on many of these issues. However, his Government’s direction of travel appears broadly set, not least as it faces continued competition for Muslim votes from both the Greens and the Gaza Independents. What is particularly unsettling, though, is that when it comes to the definition of anti-Muslim hostility, we can all detect where this is headed. But no one can see how we have ended up where we have."

Protesters arrested for ‘f--- Islam’ sign in revival of blasphemy law row - "Free speech campaigners have accused police of reviving blasphemy laws after two protesters were arrested for holding signs reading “f--- Islam”. The Free Speech Union (FSU) and Big Brother Watch have united to back a test case involving two people who were arrested for holding the signs at a Unite the Kingdom march, organised by Tommy Robinson, the far-Right activist, on May 16 in London. They are being investigated for breaches of the Public Order Act 1986, with potential religious aggravation... Ms Carlo claimed that Britain was in the “grips of a free speech crisis” that was “draining police time and squandering taxpayers’ money”. A survey last weekend, published by The Telegraph, found that 51 per cent of Britons believed their rights to free speech had been eroded by Labour in the two years since the election."

Meme - "FIRST THEY REMOVED OUR STATUES, WHATS NEXT? OUR LAWS? OUR BORDERS? OUR FLAG?"
"YES! OBVIOUSLY! DID WE STUTTER? WE SAID DECOLONIZE!"

ripx4nutmeg on X - "A new BBC InDepth feature asks why Pride is not as popular as it once was, and concludes there are nine reasons why. None of them include the at least eight senior Pride officers - one who presented on BBC radio - who have recently been convicted of paedophilia offences."
Alison Golding on X - "It also fails to mention the openly displayed sexual activity and fetishism that in any other public context would be reason for the police to intervene."
ripx4nutmeg on X - "And no mention of the hundreds of pro Pride articles the BBC publishes each year, which don't seem to be working"

Mjמירי🇨🇦🇺🇸 on X - "Okay, so what is the purpose of this incessant race realist discourse? Of course there are population-level differences. Anyone who works with psychometric data knows that. The variance reflects some combination of genetics and environment. None of this is suppressed or hidden. We already know this. What’s wholly unproductive is making this a public discourse. Theres a reason you encounter almost no psychologists engaging with it in public. For those of us with an educational psych background, it’s especially disturbing because group averages tell you remarkably little about the abilities or potential of the person sitting in front of you, and encouraging young people to understand their intelligence through racial stereotypes can itself interfere with performance, confidence and learning. There’s literally no benefit to this discussion. So what exactly do people like Nathan want?"
Thread by @EPoe187 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The point is that if you have no explanation for the cause of racial disparities, people search for one. And progressives offer a toxic answer: pervasive racism. People become hostile to the West and rail against it. In other words, people become woke. Surely candor is better? Also, on questions of broad significance, we should default on honesty. That doesn't me we must be "honesty absolutists." But it does mean that if you are advocating silence, you better have some very strong arguments. To be clear, I do not think we should dunk on this or dismiss the question. It's a very reasonable question. The topic is divisive. But the alternative is not comity. It is progressives claiming the West is racist and thus creating racial hostility."

The Preprint Problem: Fringe, Genetically Informed Studies of Group Differences in Behavior Housed on Open Science Platforms
Emil Kirkegaard on X - "'People whose research I don't like are still posting it online. Since we have already barred them from the academic journals with explicit or implicit censorship, they have resorted to posting them on preprint servers. This is bad bad bad I tell ya! We need more censorship.' Truly the enemies of open science and free inquiry. They prefer closed science and unfree inquiry."
Crémieux on X - "The funniest thing about this paper:
- The author is writing in opposition to open science
- The author is someone who previously committed fraud and we only know it because of open science
lol"

Aly Feels on X - "I love my progressive friends, but it really is crazy how negative they are. They are like recreationally miserable. I really do think it’s socially desirable and encouraged in progressive culture and it’s not all just an organic response to hardship or mental illness"
Left wingers see mental illness as an important part of their identity, but sure, right wingers are just in denial about being crazy and everyone is crazy

Sign on the Dotted Line: How B.C.’s Latest Indigenous Outrage Threatens Freedom of Contract Across Canada

Sign on the Dotted Line: How B.C.’s Latest Indigenous Outrage Threatens Freedom of Contract Across Canada

"B.C. leads the country in court decisions and government policies that seek to achieve “reconciliation” by acceding to whatever radical demands are made by Indigenous groups. The key feature of this process – unending acquiescence via court rulings, legislation, policy and “nation-to-nation” agreements, many of them hashed out in secret and later sprung on a citizenry that had no say in the matter – has become like a modern form of Dane-geld. And with the same unfortunate result.

As King Ethelred discovered, whatever you pay is never enough. Rather, each “payment” of legal and/or public-policy tribute provokes still greater demands in the future while eroding Canada’s negotiating position the next time around. All of which is causing the slow-motion destruction of our economic and social wellbeing and the diminution of Canada’s national sovereignty.

The most damaging legislative example of this process has been the enshrining of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into B.C. and federal law. But B.C. courts have wrought their own havoc with bizarre decisions that weaken key economic and legal precepts. They have tossed aside the key modern-day principle of state neutrality in religion by approving mandatory native spirituality ceremonies in public schools. Provincial judges have also ruled that the normal progress of civilization can be considered a treaty violation and that imaginary “supernatural dens” can be considered an objective reality sufficient to upend provincial laws. Even more significantly, the now-notorious 2025 Cowichan ruling revealed that fee-simple land ownership, the bedrock of Canadians’ property rights, can be pushed aside by aboriginal title on the strength of mere historical hearsay and second-hand notes.

As if all of this weren’t enough, now comes another cataclysmic threat to the coherence of Canada’s legal system: the case known as Metlakatla First Nation v. Prince Rupert Port Authority. Here the courts appear ready to erase another fundamental aspect of economic life in Canada – the sanctity of contract law. Though it concerned only a jurisdictional matter rather than settling the overall dispute, the January 2026 decision could prove to be Canada’s most dangerous Dane-geld yet.

The Metlakatla First Nation (MFN) is one of over 200 Indigenous communities in B.C. In 2021, it had a population of just 1,102 people living near the port city of Prince Rupert. Despite its tiny size, provincial and federal laws requiring a duty to “consult and accommodate” plus the ever-evolving concept of aboriginal title have given the Metlakatla a functional veto over resource development throughout their “traditional territory” that covers a vast swath – as much as 200,000 square km – of northern B.C.

The MFN exploits its hammerlock by demanding what amounts to Dane-geld from local resource projects. The tribute can take many forms: outright cash payments, job or contract guarantees, equity interests and other financial payments and/or benefits. For those who choose not to pay, the MFN makes frequent use of the courts and a cadre of expensive Vancouver lawyers who can delay or stymie any developer foolish enough to deny their clients their geld...

The record demonstrates that no resource project in the area can proceed without some form of payment to the MFN being made by taxpayers and/or industry. While some acknowledge or even celebrate this as supporting Indigenous reconciliation, what it really means is that the tribe – and effectively all of B.C.’s First Nations – exercise discretionary control over the Crown’s interests in the province. If a government needs to ask permission from another group to do anything on its lands, then it is not the sovereign master of its own house. It might not even own that house. The implications could hardly be more profound...

Bringing aboriginal law into the case, the MFN asserted that the PRPA’s duty, as an agent of the federal Crown, to consult and accommodate the MFN required it to reveal the terms of the REEF deal – even though this would have caused the PRPA to breach its contract with REEF. The MFN is basically saying that a duty to consult overrides any contractual obligations a Crown corporation may have with any other non-native organization or business...

The broad liberties that freedom of contract allows two or more parties to enter into mutually beneficial agreements have made it fundamental to the healthy functioning of our entire economic system – and, thus, a matter of paramount public interest.

The Crown’s duty to consult is a much more recent innovation, established via Supreme Court precedents that greatly expanded the meaning of the simple and clear wording of Section 35(1) of the Constitution. The duty to consult arises when a government has knowledge of the potential existence of an aboriginal right or title and is contemplating an action that might adversely affect it. This triggers a related doctrine, the “Honour of the Crown”, also manufactured by Canada’s courts, that requires accommodating a particular aboriginal right or title.

Indigenous rights proponents will argue that once aboriginal title is recognized or ceded, the Crown must vacate the jurisdictional space and allow native law to govern, giving the title-holder exclusive right to use and control the land. This has been argued in relation to the recent “Rising Tide” Haida Title Lands Agreement concerning B.C.’s former Queen Charlotte Islands. From this perspective, the new titleholder need not be bound by any agreements made by the previous occupiers – which quite likely could include legal contracts...

The MFN is essentially saying it intends to hold the entire port facility hostage until it gets what it wants. Contract law be damned...

In effect, the MFN is arguing, absurdly, it would seem, that any negotiation involving a Crown-owned entity and a potential native interest must always be resolved to the complete satisfaction of the native party, regardless of the legal consequences or temporal impossibilities...

Aboriginal rights “recognized and affirmed” by Section 35 of the Constitution are generally understood to be rights existing at the time of the first assertion of Crown sovereignty, which in B.C. is 1846. Obviously, nobody was then engaged in the handling of LPG, so no aboriginal rights have ever arisen in relation to it...

The MFN has essentially double-crossed both parties in favour of Trigon and its presumably better offer. And having put itself in such a conflict of interest, the MFN has also breached its Dane-geld agreements and should be required to give back all that lucre.

Despite such solid legal logic, however, it seems unlikely the Metlakatla will ever face any negative consequences for their actions. Given other recent B.C. court decisions that defy precedent and common sense, there’s a reasonable chance they’ll actually succeed in rewriting contract law. That is certainly implied by the recent court decision allowing the case to proceed to trial. And the “nuclear” threat to block all subsequent consultations with REEF for possible expansions and other changes could even have a good chance of paying off in terms of additional Dane-geld down the road.

But even if all this is successful in the short-term, what are the long-term consequences of this behaviour? By acting in such a discreditable manner, the MFN – and by extension all First Nations – are undermining their own claims to legitimacy. If one of the main goals of Indigenous reconciliation is to integrate and embed native interests into Canadian economic development, then native partners have a responsibility to act in a reliable and trustworthy manner. To this end, they should regard business contracts to be as sacred and inviolable as the treaties they once signed with the federal government...

The invention of new forms of aboriginal title meant to deliver a temporary business advantage to a particular First Nation raises even more uncertainty throughout the resource industry – and puts future projects in peril.

Keep in mind that the players in this dispute include large multi-national corporations with global perspectives. Undermining contract law for domestic resource projects will send another signal to the rest of the world that Canada is not a reliable place to do business. If Indigenous Canadians wish to participate in the broader Canadian economy, they need to accept the rules that have been in place for centuries and which all other participants have already agreed upon. They can’t simply make up their own game.

Correcting this situation – which has implications for all of Canada – will require the efforts of all Canadians. In my many years as a lawyer, I came to realize that my most successful business clients were those whose word was as good as a signed contract. Again, trust is fundamental to prosperity and progress. If native businessmen and businesswomen cannot be taken at their word then it falls to the business community-at-large to push back against this behaviour. The most immediate corrective is to sue over breach of contract, as mentioned earlier. This should be encouraged.

But the rest of society has a role to play as well. All citizens must be able to exercise their freedom to publicly and explicitly criticize discreditable activity, regardless of the race of those engaged in it. Unfortunately, the societal norms of present-day Canada make it nearly impossible to call out this sort of conduct in the native community, particularly by the mainstream media. The Globe and Mail’s coverage of the REEF dispute is illustrative of this reluctance.

In an article on the MFN’s February 4 declaration of its “nuclear” intent, Canada’s self-declared “national newspaper” studiously avoids any mention of the disastrous implications of the band’s actions, framing them instead as yet another example of an intransigent federal government doing harm to native interests. “Metlakatla,” the Globe blandly claims, “is upset that the port authority has frozen out the First Nation and other Trigon partners in their bid to diversify into different commodities, notably propane and butane.” Promoting such an upside-down narrative in order to avoid calling out the discreditable and self-interested behaviour of Indigenous interests – behaviour that, in this instance, threatens to wipe out a whole category of Canadian law – infantilizes the entire native business community.

Finally, it is also time for the Canadian court system to contemplate the effects of its own campaign of continued indulgence towards the escalating demands of Indigenous organizations. Allowing the MFN lawsuit to proceed despite another, superior arm of the same court system already implicitly upholding the legality of the confidentiality clause at the nexus of this entire dispute, reveals the disregard with which the B.C. judiciary has come to treat foundational aspects of Western society. We are witnessing in real-time the destruction of the various definitions, boundaries, protocols and standards that make up modern Canada. And it is being carried out with a shocking carelessness towards what lies at the heart of this process – racial favouritism...

Together with all the other outrages and absurdities foisted upon the country by the court system, this latest example of racial discrimination is turning Canada into an unpredictable, unstable and untrustworthy place to live, work and invest."

Left wingers will still call the Globe and Mail "centre-right".

Links - 26th September 2026 (1 - Donald Trump)

Meme - *Donald Trump at McDonalds* "This man went from fry cook at McDonalds to President of the United States! Who said the American dream is dead?"

Dr. Buzz Aldrin on X - "A half-Century ago, it was an honor to serve my country in the effort to put a human being on the Moon. I am proud of what we accomplished then and I have dedicated my life to the pursuit of an enduring human presence in space – it is a calling that runs through every fiber of my being.     Over time, I have seen our government’s approach to space wax and wane. But under the first Trump Administration, I was impressed to see how human space exploration was elevated as a policy of high importance again. Under President Trump’s first term, America saw a revitalized interest in Space, and his Administration reignited national efforts to get back to the Moon, and push on to Mars. The Trump Administration also reinstituted the National Space Council, and our Nation’s defense was enhanced with the creation of the U.S. Space Force – increasingly important as space becomes a contested domain. At the same time, I have been enthused and excited by the great advancements in the private sector space economy, led by visionaries like @elonmusk .  These are concrete accomplishments that align with my concerns and America’s policy priorities.       America is facing serious and difficult challenges both at home and abroad.  The Presidency requires clarity in judgement, decisiveness, and calm under pressure that few have a natural ability to manage, or the life experience to successfully undertake. It is a job where decisions are made that routinely involve American lives – some urgently but not without thought. The job requires sober analysis of frightening scenarios, and the instinct to lead with resolve. From the skies over Korea in air-to-air combat to navigating, landing, and walking on the Moon, I appreciate this kind of pressure. I know what it is like to have to make these kinds of decisions, with firmness and follow-through.   In this election, we have a choice and we all have one vote. For some, the choice may not be easy – but in times of uncertainty real leaders are most needed – to guide and inspire a people, to push through the noise, recognize what really matters, and accomplish missions critical to all citizens. Most Americans rightly consider it an honor to cast their vote for a leader they believe will best serve the nation. For me, for the future of our country, to meet enormous challenges, and for the proven policy accomplishments above, I believe we are best served by voting for @realDonaldTrump . I wholeheartedly endorse him for President of the United States. Godspeed President Trump, and God Bless the United States of America."
Weird how he didn't get the memo that Trump is evil

Report: Trump Bill Will Cause 175 Billion People To Lose Medicaid And Die | Babylon Bee

Meme - "The left when J6ers rot in jail for four years" *happy Pikachu*
"The left when J6ers get money because the government denied them a right to speedy trial" *upset Pikachu*
"The left when J6 precedents are used against them and Code Pink and Antifa get 20 years in prison without trial" *shocked Pikachu*

Democrats Criticize Trump For Holding MMA Match On The Hallowed Ground Where Biden Hosted Topless Trannies | Babylon Bee

Thread by @lamps_apple on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "E. Jean Carroll and the Judge in this case need to be sitting in a prison cell.  When Carroll first went public in 2019, she described laughing on the phone to Birnbach immediately after the encounter, recounting it as cheeky banter in a dressing room. Birnbach is the one who stopped her and said, “I think he raped you.” Carroll refused to go to the police.  Fast-forward to the lawsuit, and suddenly it’s a three-minute violent rape, Trump lunging, slamming her against the wall, pinning her, ripping down her tights. She fights him off and escapes.  The same woman who was giggling on the sidewalk about the “playful” meeting with the “real estate tycoon” now describes a brutal assault she barely survived.  E. Jean Carroll’s own account of when the alleged attack happened is a comedy of shifting dates that should have ended the case on day one:
- She first pinned it to the last few months of 1994 or 1995 (based on the wool dress and tights, no coat). Then she corrected herself: “I mean ‘95–’96.”
- At some point it was brought up that Birnbach, her main witness and the person she called within minutes of the attack, traveled to Mar-a-lago Feb. 1996 and wrote a glowing review on Trump.
- Then, citing her friend Lisa Birnbach, she insisted it must have been after February 1996, because Birnbach interviewed Trump at Mar-a-Lago for a glowing New York magazine piece in February 1996. Carroll’s logic: “Lisa never would have gone down there if she knew what Trump had done to me.”
- Then, when pressed on cross-examination to pick a date, she immediately walked it back: “I’m not sure… my best guess is spring of 1996… although it possibly could have been in the fall of 1995.”
So the attack was before February 1996, after February 1996, maybe 1994, definitely 1995-96, she wishes she could give a date but can’t, and heaven help her if she could. Got it. The absurdity is off the charts. If this is what passes for credible evidence in America, we don’t have a justice system anymore.
The jury awarded her $5,000,000.....  When Trump responded to the allegation and rightfully called Carroll a liar, she sued him for defamation. She claimed that readers no longer wanted to write to a woman the president had branded a liar and that her column had received 50 percent fewer letters from readers.  She had been posting anti-trump content on Facebook for 4 years leading up to this false claim... It is highly unlikely she had any Trump supporters "writing to her" to begin with.
Here is Trump... March of 1996 at the Academy Awards.  Somehow not one person on the street or in the store saw a billionaire celebrity walk in, get to the 6th floor, and attack Carroll. They didn’t see Carroll run out. Not one person saw Trump leave the store.  I mean this is absurd. I demand E. Jean Carroll get prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Throw her in jail."

Art on X - "The E. Jean Carroll case against President Trump is one of the strangest civil cases in American history. The foundational problem is this: Carroll could not identify when the alleged incident occurred — not even the year with any precision. That should have killed the case as dead as a skunk on the road right there. Without a temporal anchor, no defendant — regardless of guilt or innocence — can mount an alibi defense. Trump, who has maintained detailed calendars and staff records for decades, was denied the most basic tool of self-defense: the ability to establish where he was. That is not a technicality. It is a due process violation at the constitutional level. Then Carroll produced the one piece of physical evidence she claimed corroborated her account — the dress she wore during the alleged incident. It was subsequently established that the dress was designed after the incident could have occurred. The sole corroborating evidence falsified her timeline. The case proceeded anyway. The resulting verdict was then weaponized in a defamation suit — where Trump was held liable for denying the allegation, while being procedurally barred from defending against it, because it was already "proven" in another court, regardless how flawed the procedure was. He was punished, in effect, for asserting his own innocence. Compounding everything: coordinated professional and physical threats so thoroughly intimidated the legal community that attorneys refused these cases regardless of available fees. When you systematically destroy a defendant's ability to retain counsel of choice, you forfeit the right to a legitimate verdict. An allegation is not evidence. Process without substance is not law. And a verdict produced under these conditions carries no legitimate authority — whatever its formal status.  Not only is it the right move to investigate Carroll, but every other person involved as well. Trump is owed serious damages here, and there may be a few people who belong in prison for their roles in the case."

Apple Lamps on X - "The Carroll case rested on a sequence of legal maneuvers with no precedent in American civil litigation. Democratic legislators passed a retroactive temporary law eliminating the statute of limitations for decades-old accusations that could not be dated, located, or defended with alibis. The day the temporary law took effect, Carroll filed her pre-prepared lawsuit, the first in the state to do so.   A Democratic mega-donor secretly funded the plaintiff’s legal costs through a nonprofit. The arrangement stayed hidden until one of Trump’s lawyers discovered it. A Clinton-appointed judge then sealed all records so the jury never learned the billionaire backer had publicly committed to Trump’s political destruction. Every participant in the legislative, funding, and judicial steps operated inside the same political network, and each decision produced the same cumulative result.  The jury explicitly checked “no” on the verdict form’s specific rape question. The judge ruled rape proven anyway, claiming the jury had used a common rather than statutory definition… an impossibility, since their rejection under the common definition precludes rape by any standard. Trump’s team was barred from arguing innocence before a second jury, which awarded $83.3 million ($65 million punitive) on the rape finding the first jury had rejected.  A defendant was sued for defamation over denying an accusation, prevented from asserting that denial as a defense, tried before a judge who concealed the plaintiff’s political funding, and hit with a nine-figure verdict built on facts the jury itself refused to find.   No comparable sequence exists in recorded U.S. civil litigation history."

Meme - C3 @C_3C_3: "So let me get this straight... Reid Hoffman who was one of Jeffery Epstein's Island regulars funded the E Jean Carroll lawsuit with real no evidence against President Trump after New York changed laws to allow the lawsuit to proceed. That can't be right can it?"

C3 on X - "Reid Hoffman is a disgusting vile human. A real creep. He was behind both the Christine Blasey Ford sexual assault scam on Brett Kavanaugh and the E Jean Carroll sexual assault scam on President Trump. All while he himself was visiting Epstein’s Island, ranch and apartment."

Mike Bales 🫡🇺🇸 on X - "He’s the President of the United States — not your ex, not your personal villain, and not the cause of your misery. You don’t have to support him. That’s America.   But if someone is simply backing the sitting President and it makes you rage, cut people off, attack families, or act like garbage — you are the problem.   You’ve turned politics into a personality disorder: nonstop outrage and toddler meltdowns online. Grow up. He won. The sky didn’t fall. Pay your bills, care for your family, touch grass, and move on."

Leading Report on X - "BREAKING: Trump “collaborators” should have their heads shaved, put in orange pajamas, and then marched down Pennsylvania Avenue while the public spits on them, after Trump leaves office, says veteran Democrat strategist James Carville."
Auron MacIntyre on X - "Conservatives have not sufficiently internalized the fact that the Rubicon is behind them whether they like it or not. It doesn’t matter if Trump isn’t really a dictator, it doesn’t matter if you argued for restraint. If you ever lose again you will be jailed at best"
Damn Republicans refusing to give up power and abusing the law to persecute political opponents!
Time to condemn conservatives for dividing people. The left stands for unity, kindness and empathy!

Meme - "Liberal woman: "Why can't none of I you fuking aim across a grassy knoll in a back of a moving car!" "We were really Americans!" "Stop pulling the trigger unless you have the fucking SHOT!""
Clear proof Trump incites violence

Meme - "Never forget that Democrats held power for 12 out of the last 16 years... but they still blame Trump for every problem in the US and claim they can fix it. Make THAT make sense"

Meme - *Trump* *man having problems sleeping*
"LIVING IN YOUR HEAD IS NO LONGER RENT FREE. THERE WILL BE A 30% TARIFF ON THAT NOW"

‘Rape Melania’ sign at anti-Trump protest draws strong rebuke, sparking Twitter trend - The Washington Post
Clear proof that Donald Trump is a rapist

Andy Ngo on X - "Leftist publication The Intercept blamed Donald Trump and his supporters for multiple bomb threats on Jewish institutions in February 2017. It turned out the threats came from one of The Intercept's staff reporters, Juan Thompson. He was convicted and sentenced to 60 months in prison"

Grant Park cross burning incident person of interest speaks out - "It was a startling and offensive scene.  A burning cross in Grant Park last Tuesday - the century-old flaming symbol of racism and hatred.  For nearly a week, Chicago police and the FBI have been trying to identify the man who was suspected of setting up the cross and torching it.  NBC 5 Investigates has identified a 21-year-old college senior who said he is the person in the photo released by police and who described what he did and why...   University of Illinois Chicago senior Merlin Lu said he knew the implications of a burning cross and had placed a MAGA hat atop the cross, explaining his motivation was to protest Trump administration injustice - not something racist."
Hon. Vickie Paladino on X - "This kid belongs under the prison.  And you can be assured, that if this cross burning wasn't a false flag, and actually committed by someone on the right, the hate crimes unit would have that person under the jail right now, and we'd be getting endless lectures about the dangers of fascism.  But because it was done by a leftist who wants President Trump assassinated (pretty mainstream opinion for the left these days), the worst he's getting is a semi-unflattering interview by a local NBC affiliate."

Thomas Massie on X - "Feds placed the pipe bombs and fomented the demonstrations on January 6, 2021. One day this will be known as certainly as the fact that COVID was the result of U.S. funded lab research."
Are left wingers going to turn on him now for going against not one but two left wing shibboleths?

Is Trump Preparing a Military Coup? - International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine - "Bill Maher, the liberal host of Real Time, a talk show where he satirizes current events, a show with half a million viewers, said that the Trump government was getting Americans used to seeing a masked police force, people snatched off the streets, and troops in the streets of Washington, D.C., He described it as a “slow moving coup” and suggested that even if Democrats won the 2026 elections, they might not be able take office, comments widely reported in the national news media. The liberal journal Foreign Policy asked, “Is Trump executing a self-coup?” and provided evidence that indeed he appeared to be doing just that. Already back in February, The Guardian ran an editorial titled, “Donald Trump’s power grab: a coup veiled by chaos.”  Today evidence that Trump may try to carry out a military coup is piling up"
These are the same people who blamed him for not deploying the National Guard on Jan 6. Of course, if he had, they'd be accusing him of carrying out a coup too

Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "Funny how the same people who melted down over Trump at MSG clogging NYC traffic are dead silent about Taylor Swift’s wedding causing the exact same disruption"

Disgraced Propagandist on X - "Do people know that Trump’s trade representative Jamieson Greer has opened up investigations into 60 countries that we accuse of using forced slave labor to make ultra cheap products impossible to compete with?  Basically, the Trump admin is the sole leadership on the global stage currently opposed to current modern slavery and doing anything about it. All the “liberal nations” of Europe etc just let it happen."

TheMastiffMafia on X - ""REALITY | Today I finally understood something about Donald Trump that I had been missing this entire time. And when it hit me — it hit me completely. Because look at who this man chose to surround himself with. Not billionaires.  Not people born into power. Not people who had everything handed to them.
 Karoline Leavitt — 27 years old. Ice cream shop girl from New Hampshire.   Trump looked at her and saw something the entire world missed.   Made her the youngest Press Secretary in American history.
Susie Wiles — a woman who has spent her whole life quietly strategizing from the background.   No fame. No spotlight. Just pure brilliance.   Trump looked at her and said — you will be my Chief of Staff. First female Chief of Staff in American history.
JD Vance — a soldier. A boy from Appalachia who served his country in uniform before he ever served it in office.   Trump looked at him and said — you will stand beside me.
 Pete Hegseth — a soldier who gave everything on the battlefield. Two Bronze Stars.   Trump looked at him and said — you will lead our military.
 Marco Rubio — the son of a bartender and a hotel maid. Two immigrants who came to America with nothing.   Trump looked at their son and made him the first Latino Secretary of State in American history.
My wife heard all of this tonight and said — do you understand what Trump actually did.   He did not build a powerful administration.  He built an unbreakable one.   Because every single person in it knows what it feels like to have nothing. And people who came from nothing never take anything for granted.  Tonight say one prayer for this entire administration. And say a bigger one for the man who chose them.    If Trump’s team just gave you goosebumps tonight — type “TRUMP DIDN’T JUST PICK A CABINET — HE PICKED WARRIORS” below.   Then pass this to every American who needed to understand why this administration hits different from every single one that came before it."
Via @JamesHu27192912  on X"
Another reason elites hate him so much

Brewery faces permit loss after Trump controversy - "A Wisconsin brewery whose owner once promised to give away free beer if President Donald Trump dies is set to lose its alcohol permit, state officials confirmed to USA TODAY on July 29.  Minocqua Brewing Company, owned by outspoken progressive activist Kirk Bangstad, will have its alcohol permit revoked Aug. 4, according to the state's Department of Revenue.  The action follows a June raid in which state officials seized canned beer from Bangstad's company, alleging it had been transported into Wisconsin from Illinois without the required permits and taxes, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, part of the USA TODAY Network... The permit revocation comes about three months after FBI agents interviewed Bangstad over a social media post that appeared to reference an alleged assassination attempt against Trump following the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 25... In a Facebook post from the brewery's account, Bangstad wrote: "Well, we almost got #freebeerday. Either a brother or sister in the Resistance needs to work on their marksmanship or he faked another assassination to get a positive news cycle."... Bangstad and his attorney told agents they neither planned nor wished harm on Trump or Vance and did not support any groups advocating violence against them."
No surprise what TDS is linked to

Stacy is Right on X - "I'm old enough to remember when everybody was MAGA.  Bill Clinton 1993: "We have to end welfare as a way of life and make it a path to independence and dignity."  Barack Obama 2005: "We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected undocumented unchecked and go around our communities without our knowledge of them."  Hillary Clinton 2008: "If they've committed a crime deport them. No questions asked. They're gone."  Chuck Schumer 2009: "Illegal immigration is wrong plain and simple."  Joe Biden 2006: "I voted for a fence. I voted for 700 miles of fence."  Harry Reid 1993: "No sane country would grant citizenship to children of illegal immigrants."  Bernie Sanders 2015: "Open borders is a Koch brothers proposal that would make everybody in America poorer."  The Secure Fence Act of 2006 had yes votes from Obama, Hillary, Schumer and Biden.  Don't you dare allow them to gaslight you into thinking your values are racist and radical. These used to be mainstream Democrat positions.   They only changed their minds once their party decided to use illegals to steal power from the American people."

Jason D. Meister 🇺🇸 on X - "They arrested the President of the United States of America 4X, charged him 91X, indicted him 4X, spied on his campaign, sabotaged his first term, jailed his supporters, raided his private residence, censored him, gagged him, tried to bankrupt him, and attempted to remove him from state ballots.   When all of that failed they tried to assassinate him not once but four times.   And they go on national television to talk about how we need to vote for them to save democracy."

The Goal is a Fascist Continent - "On July 16, Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller’s long-planned conference on “The Resurgence of Political Terrorism” was convened in Washington, D.C. Delegates from over 60 countries were in attendance to hear the Trump administration preach about the gravest threat to “civilization” and to coordinate police and military in response. In the aftermath of the administration’s cuts of federal programs that monitor far-right violence, the conference was premised on the highly dubious claim that the vast majority of historical and contemporary violence emanates from “the far left.”... Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau’s remarks focused on the 1970s, with particular emphasis on the South American organizations Tupamaros and Montoneros, which he designated as terrorist groups... The former Homeland Security secretary, who just recently had overseen ICE’s “mass deportation” campaign in U.S. cities, declared a shared mission “to go after these narco-terrorists that are destroying our people.”"
Left wing logic: if you prevent left wing terrorists from killing people, and drug traffickers from working without restraint, you are promoting fascism. This is very telling. Left wingers want left wing terrorists to be free to murder anyone and for drugs to be readily available

Meme - Mike Solana: "serious question does the average democrat actually know that steve bannon went to prison?"
"NEWS ANALYSIS. In Going After His Foes, Trump Sets a Precedent That Could Haunt His Allies. President Trump' retribution campaign risks ushering in a cycle of retaliation in which each new administration takes aim at the last one."

Trump wins golf championship and mocks opponents: ‘I have talent, they don’t!’

Meme - Suzie rizzio @Suzierizzo1: "I'm a first grade teacher and my class is so much more intelligent than him it's crazy. <3" - 9/7/24
Suzie rizzio @Suzierizzo1: "I'm a nurse and I watched hundreds of MAGA die including a friend's mother who swore they were putting a chip in her arm. The majority regretted it in the end." - 8/15/25

Links - 25th September 2026 (2 - Socialism)

Does anyone else feel like "working-class culture" is just coded masculinity? : r/Socialism_101 - "I consider myself a democratic socialist and care deeply about workers' rights, unions, universal healthcare, and improving material conditions for everyone.  That said... I get incredibly uncomfortable around a lot of blue-collar workers.  I was recently at a family gathering where several of my cousins, who work in construction and trucking, were talking loudly about football, trucks, hunting, and making jokes that probably wouldn't fly in progressive spaces. They weren't even talking to me, but I felt on edge the entire time.  Maybe it's because so many trades are dominated by conservative men, but I just associate that whole culture with aggression. The yelling, the swearing, the macho posturing. It honestly intimidates me.  People always say "the working class is the backbone of society," but if I'm being honest, I have a much easier time connecting with baristas, nonprofit workers, graduate students, and people in creative fields than I do with mechanics or roofers.  I know this probably sounds elitist, and I feel guilty because I believe in class solidarity. But every time someone says we need to spend more time organizing among tradespeople, my first reaction is that I'd rather not.  Does anyone else struggle with this? How do you reconcile believing in socialism while feeling deeply uncomfortable around the kinds of people socialism is supposedly for?"
Time to replace the hammer and sickle with a keyboard and pen

Joshua Reed Eakle 🗽 on X - "Marxism is so depleted it's insane. No ambition, no new answers, no adjustments. Just 1917 forever. A Bolshevik infinity. We must imagine Sisyphus seizing the means of production."

Ken Gardner on X - "One of Ayn Rand's very best observations, which has aged like fine wine:  "Socialism is not a movement of the people. It is a movement of the intellectuals, originated, led and controlled by the intellectuals, carried by them out of their stuffy ivory towers into those bloody fields of practice where they unite with their allies and executors: the thugs.""
sg on X - "Neither Marx nor Engels came from the working class, and certainly weren’t serfs or peasants."
Ken Gardner on X - "And we are seeing it today. DSA is basically young college-educated radicals, many of whom haven't done an honest day's work in their entire lives. <Many of them seem unemployable, tbh.>"

‏ً on X - "Genuinely, I DO NOT like the concept of capitalism. I don’t want to work my job every day. I want to make art. I want to be in my garden. I want to feel something."
Hon. Vickie Paladino on X - "Spoiler Alert: Socialism does NOT mean you don’t have to work.  I have no idea how these idiotic children got the idea that socialism equals never having to work.  Capitalism didn’t invent the concept of a job or a boss or bills or responsibilities. It just found a better way to organize them.   But rest assured, socialist countries have still have all of the above. You don’t just get to decide to be an artist or dancer or whatever.   It’s actually insane that any of this needs to be explained."

Meme - "Communists when they get assigned to Alaskan coal mines instead of teaching lesbian dance theory from a free luxury condo"

Meme - "r/communism101
How is labor properly incentivized in higher-stage communism
How did Marx think society will function in the higher stage of communism when private property and classes are abolished, theres no wage labor and commodity production or even money to compensate. What incentivizes me to become a pilot instead of a street cleaner, my love for planes or humanity? How can there without wage labor be a difference in outcomes for a pilot vs cleaner"
"People that will actually live in a communist society will neither think nor behave like you, much like you do not think or behave like people living in a feudal society."
This is why gulags and re-education camps are such features of Communism

Tankie of the Lake | Facebook - "Liberal believe that the Soviet invasions of Poland and Finland are "gotcha's" because they genuinely believe that the only acceptable response to fascism is to do nothing.  The Nazis where conquering Poland, the Soviets stopped them from taking all of it. Finland was an axis power, and they only finally removed the swastika from their Air Force insignias in the 21st century.  Liberals demand that existing socialists states must be blameless saints while they built a system that handed the nuclear codes to a dementia riddled fascist pedophile."
Left wingers are making stuff up again as they always do. Of course the tankies in the comments are pretending the MR pact was exactly the same as the Munich agreement (as if Stalin wasn't caught by surprise by the German invasion)

History Betrayed - "The Soviet-Finnish Winter War (1939–1940) is often portrayed in Western history as a simple story of Soviet aggression against a small democratic nation. But the actual situation was rooted in the strategic reality facing the USSR before World War II fully erupted. The Finnish border sat dangerously close to Leningrad, one of the Soviet Union’s largest industrial and population centers. As Nazi Germany expanded across Europe and collective security collapsed, Soviet leadership viewed the existing border as militarily indefensible. The USSR initially sought territorial exchanges and buffer zones through negotiation, offering Finland land elsewhere in exchange for moving the border farther from Leningrad. Finland rejected the proposals, fearing Soviet domination. War followed. Early Soviet offensives were disastrous, with Finnish forces using terrain, winter conditions, and mobile tactics to inflict massive losses on the Red Army. But once Soviet command reorganized and concentrated overwhelming artillery and manpower, the balance shifted decisively. Finland eventually signed peace, ceding territory but preserving its independence. When Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, Finland later joined the war against the Soviets alongside the Germans, reinforcing Soviet fears that the northern approach to Leningrad was a major strategic vulnerability. The war demonstrated both the weaknesses of the early Red Army and the brutal security calculations shaping Europe on the eve of the largest war in human history. #worldwar2 #ww2 #winterwar #history #historyfacts"
Is there any communist aggression tankies won't justify? Whitewashing communist crimes is indeed a betrayal of history

Diego Angulo on X - (Translated from Spanish): "As a former sympathizer of the Left, today I want to show you 10 questions that leftists always dodge because they don't know what to answer:
1. Why does no one risk their life to escape to a socialist country, but rather the other way around?
2. If Socialism is so superior to Capitalism, why does it need violence instead of simply convincing people?
3. If the market is so irrational, why does the State need market prices to make decisions?
4. If the worker creates all the wealth, why does productivity change so much based on the available capital and technology, and not so much based on the hours worked?
5. If the end of Capitalism is approaching, why does it survive all crises and give the impression that it strengthens over time?
6. If the entrepreneur contributes nothing, why has it never been enough to simply gather workers to create companies?
7. If you distrust entrepreneurs, why do you trust politicians so much?
8. If the State must correct all the market's failures, who corrects the State's failures?
9. If business profit is undeserved, why would a public servant's salary be fully justified?
10. If Capitalism is exploitation, why do people participate in it and want to participate even when they have other alternatives?"

Axios on X - "GOP reboots the Red Scare as young Democrats embrace socialism"
Greg Lukianoff on X - "Disappointed to see this using the “conservative pounce” formulation.  I’m Gen X. All of us, including liberals like me, were there when we watched a nation filled with brilliant people put its best minds to making socialism work. It was an unparalleled disaster — not just economically, but environmentally, and certainly from a human rights perspective as well.  The fact that we now have people on both the right and the left who think Lenin was on to something, or that “real socialism has never been tried,” is mind-blowing. It represents a massive generational failure of our K–PhD system. They didn’t learn the history, philosophy, or economics that would have prevented them from falling for the same midwittery that too many of our grandparents fell for.  Sure, it sounds nice. Utopia always does. But it was a colossal disaster that we must not repeat.  So no, Axios. The news isn’t that the GOP is sounding the alarm. It’s that more genuine liberals aren’t."

Madeline Pendleton on X - "Deciding which non-capitalist ideology you like is the easy part, fun even. Unlearning all the capitalist propaganda you were fed about the world is the hard part bc it means admitting you were wrong about everything. A lot of people do the first but not the second."
Cathy Young 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 on X - "This dingbat reminds me of the time my mom (then 5-6 years out of the USSR & teaching music at an American university) started telling a colleague about her & her family's experiences with Soviet medicine and he told her she was channeling American propaganda 🤣🤣🤣"

Students For Liberty | Facebook - "Angela Davis Made Political Imprisonment Her Life's Work.
She edited If They Come in the Morning in 1971 while facing capital charges. She wrote Are Prisons Obsolete? She co-founded Critical Resistance in 1997. She built the modern language of prison abolition in the United States, and she built it on a principle that sounded absolute: no human being should be caged for their beliefs. Before she was an abolitionist writer, Davis was a UCLA philosophy professor and a Communist Party USA member. In August 1970, guns registered in her name were used in a California courthouse raid that killed a judge and three others. She fled, made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, and spent sixteen months in jail on charges of kidnapping, conspiracy, and murder. During that time, "Free Angela" committees were organized across the Soviet bloc. East German schoolchildren sent her postcards by the hundreds of thousands. Moscow made her a global cause. In June 1972, a jury acquitted her on every count.
The Principle Was Supposed to Be Universal.
She walked out of jail owing a debt to a global movement that had made political imprisonment its cause. The claim she carried forward was supposed to apply to every regime that kept a dissenter in a cell. A prisoner in California and a prisoner in Prague were the same category of injustice, whatever flag flew over the courthouse.
In August 1972, a Letter Arrived from Prague.
Jiří Pelikán, former director of Czechoslovak Television and a lifelong communist, wrote to Davis in the pages of the New York Review of Books. Soviet tanks had crushed the Prague Spring four years earlier. His own party comrades were now in Ruzyně prison for the crime of defending socialism with a human face.
He Named the Prisoners One by One.
Milan Hübl, historian. Jaroslav Šabata, psychologist. Karel Kyncl and Jiří Hochman, journalists. Most had been jailed by other communists. Pelikán asked Davis to visit Ruzyně, to speak for men imprisoned for the same reason she had been. He ended the letter: "I assure you, Angela, that not only I but many other people are waiting for a reply."
No Reply Ever Came.
There is no evidence Davis read the letter, and none that she answered it. The champion of political prisoners had received a plea from a communist reformer jailed by communists, and she chose silence. Silence in her case was itself a position.
The Pattern Kept Repeating.
In 1975, Solzhenitsyn told the AFL-CIO labor federation in New York that when Czechs had appealed to Davis, she answered that the prisoners "deserve what they get." In 1991, Alan Dershowitz described giving Davis's office a list of Soviet Jewish refuseniks jailed for wanting to leave the USSR. Her office replied, by his account, that these were opponents of socialism who belonged behind bars.
Meanwhile She Accepted the Honors of the Jailers.
In 1979 Davis flew to Moscow to accept the Lenin Peace Prize from the government that ran the Gulag. In East Germany she was celebrated by Walter Ulbricht, embraced by Erich Honecker, granted an honorary doctorate at the University of Leipzig. Rudolf Bahro, the East German dissident socialist rotting in a Stasi cell, never received a single public word from her.
The Abolitionist Would Not Abolish the Gulag.
A prison abolitionist who selects her prisoners is no longer abolishing prisons. She is redistributing them. The cages Davis wanted torn down were the cages built by regimes she opposed. The cages built by regimes she admired were beneath her attention, and the prisoners inside them were beneath her advocacy. A principle that applies only to your enemies and never to your allies is not a principle. It is a weapon. The men in Ruzyně, the refuseniks in Soviet cells and labor camps, and the dissident socialists in Honecker's Germany paid the price for the difference."

Mildly Interesting Stuff That You Might Like | Facebook - "In 1936, George Orwell traveled to Spain to fight fascists, but the people who nearly killed him were his own communist allies. At the time, Orwell identified strongly with the radical left and had joined the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), an anti-Stalinist socialist militia in Barcelona. He believed he was stepping into a utopian workers' revolution where class structures had been abolished and true equality was taking root. His romantic ideals were violently shattered—not just by the fascist forces of Francisco Franco, but by his own nominal allies. In May 1937, Soviet-backed communists systematically turned on their leftist counterparts in Spain. Orwell witnessed firsthand the brutal suppression, manufactured propaganda, and purges directed by Moscow against the very people who were supposed to be fighting on the same side. He barely escaped Spain with his life, fleeing across the border while many of his comrades were imprisoned or executed by Soviet secret police. Before his time in Spain, Orwell was largely sympathetic to the communist experiment in Russia, viewing it as a flawed but perhaps necessary step toward a more equitable society. After surviving the betrayal in Catalonia, his perspective completely inverted. He recognized that totalitarianism, regardless of whether it draped itself in fascist or communist rhetoric, relied on the destruction of objective truth and the absolute suppression of individual liberty. This firsthand brush with ideological betrayal fundamentally transformed Orwell's worldview. He documented his disillusionment in his memoir Homage to Catalonia, and the experience shifted his focus toward a targeted crusade against authoritarianism. The direct exposure to Soviet tactics in Spain directly inspired his masterworks, Animal Farm and 1984. Without his firsthand experience in the trenches of Catalonia, the modern vocabulary for describing oppressive governments might never have been written."

Is anyone else completely disillusioned by the actual “proletariat”? : r/CapitalismVSocialism - "I need to vent, because I’m honestly vibrating with anxiety and frustration right now.  So, I identify as a socialist. I read theory, I support unions, and I genuinely believe in dismantling capitalist structures. But lately, I am finding it harder and harder to advocate for the actual members of the working class, because, let’s be honest, so many of them are completely steeped in toxic masculinity and reactionary, anti-progressive attitudes.  I was at the local café down the street from my apartment this morning, trying to get some grading/reading done before logging into my remote job. It was raining, so I had my umbrella. I also happen to carry a canvas tote bag from my university's literature department.  Two construction workers in high-vis vests came in. They were incredibly loud, taking up way too much physical space, and completely ignoring the unspoken social contract of quiet morning spaces. I was already feeling a bit overstimulated.  As they walked past my table, one of them looked at my tote bag, then at my umbrella, and said, entirely unprovoked, “Hey buddy, careful with that umbrella, don’t want it getting caught on your purse."  His buddy chuckled and they just walked on to get their coffees.  It was a "joke," I guess. "Playful" teasing. But it felt so deeply coded in gender policing and fragile heteronormativity. I just froze. I didn't say anything because, frankly, they were twice my size and I didn't want to escalate a situation with people who clearly don't understand basic boundaries. I just stared at my laptop and felt my face get hot.  Here’s the thing that gets me: I spend my free time fighting for their healthcare. I vote for policies that would literally give them better wages and safer working conditions. Yet, if I tried to explain the concept of intersectionality or gender-neutral language to them, they’d probably just laugh in my face or call me a slur.  How are we supposed to build solidarity with people who actively despise our values? I’m starting to feel like the actual proletariat has zero interest in progress. They don't want a socialist utopia; they just want to eat meat, drive giant trucks, and make fun of people who read books.  I’m just so tired of being the only one trying. Anyone else struggle with this?"

Meme - ""Holodomor wasn't violent because it was faceless bureaucrats and 7 degrees of separation" -Arya Winningson"
Arya Winningson: "yeah I would not describ that as violence. All infliction of suffering or pain is not violence. Violence is a specific type, a subset"
Words the left disapproves of are violence. Violence the left approves of isn't violence.

Meme - "Socialists say I should stop confusing socialism with communism. I say they should I stop confusing my money with their money."

Meme - Project Liberal @ProjectLiberal: "Leftists will call everything but this a genocide."
"Life expectancy. The period life expectancy at birth, in a given year.
China's "Great Leap Forward!" Also known as "Really bad weather!" *4 year drop in world life expectancy*"
DSA Watch: "Hasan Piker: Mao Zedong is one of the great leaders of this world"
It's only genocide when it pushes the left wing agenda

lily on X - ""Stalin would've killed you" If the party decides that is the right action ill gladly take the bullet"
Yuri Bezmenov's Ghost on X - "Here, a demoralized person's loyalty shifts entirely to ideology, embracing party decisions over personal values or self preservation. They've been conditioned through long-term subversion to accept even death for the cause, viewing it as a noble, ultimate act of devotion."

Jack on X - "They killed Charlie Kirk because he was their biggest threat. They could never beat him in a debate. Here is a resurfaced clip of him exposing Hasan Piker for not actually wanting socialism and living in a complete act….
KIRK: "Why don't you give 95% of your money away and go live on a commune?”
PIKER: "Do you really think that's how it works?”
KIRK: "Why not? Go live what you preach. I live what I preach. I am a free market capitalist. I employ people. I took a risk. I have my own startup business. Every single day, I practice what I preach."
"He wants other people to contribute to what he considers to be a good idea. What he considers will make the world a better place."
"You have the freedom to go live as a socialist. Go do it, Hassan. What's stopping you?"
An absolute mic drop moment."

Meme - The Modern Marxist: "The USSR was a democracy. China is a democracy. Cuba is a democracy. The US is NOT a democracy. If you disagree with this, I implore you to actually look into the political systems of these countries"
The fourth positionist: "North Korea is also a democracy."
The Modern Marxist: "Agreed"

/his/ - Rejoice, our favorite /his/ comic is going to Chin - History & Humanities - 4chan - "Acktually, while in theory communism is supposedly to attract the the poor workers, in reality their target audience dont give a fuck and the people most attracted to it are spoiled children of upper middle class families or psychopathic thugs and criminals, both of whom didnt work much in their lives.
All the communist leaders who successfully take over countries are failsons of the upper class:
>Karl Marx
Dad was an upper middle class lawyer, mom was from a wealthy merchant/future industrialist family, his family owned many vineyards and lived in spacious 10 bedroom home.
>Lenin
Dad was a noveau riche nobleman. Had a privileged upbringing in a huge house with servants and attended elite schools before flunking out
>Mao Zedong
Dad was prosperous merchant, owning 20 acres of land (huge by Chinese standard), the richest guy in his village. Was able to send Mao to good schools and support him throughout his studies which he eventually dropped out
>Che Guevara
Born to upper-class parents, dad is a well-to-do architect and businessman, mom is from a rich landowning family. Big houses in multiple provinces, went to good schools, took holidays all over Latin America.
>Fidel Castro
Son of a prosperous sugar plantation owner in Cuba with hundreds of servants and workers. Went to the best schools
>Ho Chi Minh
Son of a land-owning Confucian bureaucrat. Went to the best French colonial school before dropping out
>Pol Pot
Son of aristocratic landowning family with ties to the Cambodian monarchy. Went good local schools and went to France for college"

Meme - "Marx is an idiot."
"Have you read Marx?"
"No" -> "Goes to show"
"I've read the Manifesto" -> "Well, that's just a pamphlet"
"I've read Das Kapital" -> "You have to study Marx for years before understanding him."
"I've read his letters" -> "You need to separate the author from his works."

Meme - Stalin: "THERE IS NO I IN TEAM. BUT THERE IS A U IN GULAG"

Passion Is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art

Haliya Bathing / Agnes Arellano

The National Gallery Singapore's Passion Is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art was the least erotic erotic art exhibition I'd ever been to.

It was very abstract, intellectual & indirect.

Dissolving into the Same Breath #2 / Lavender Chang

A lot of was abstract modern art where the writeup (if any) didn't make any link to eroticism and/or was related to love, which is not the same as eroticism.

Pinaree Sanpitak's 'Noon-Nom'
Presumably, the beanbags are supposed to be breasts. You are invited to remove your shoes and step on them.

Even seemingly erotic items weren't always well-presented.

Yab-Yums look erotic, and this one was probably the closest the exhibition came to depicting sex, but are not supposed to be erotic (at least in some interpretations). This theme wasn't explored: in fact, I think the Yab-Yum was not even labelled (certainly, it's not mentioned in the exhibition content material online), but other sources name it as "Vajradhara and Prajnaparamita".

Nudity is also featured, but nudity isn't necessarily erotic (think medical textbooks, mortuary photographs or an old woman being stripped by a hospital attendant). A prime example of this was a video from Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook: I’m Living:

This involved dressing a young girl's corpse in various clothes. I didn't watch the full 24 min 59 sec, but there didn't seem to be any nudity, let alone an erotic aspect to the video.

Lim Chong Keat's Jack is only there because the artist flippantly called it erotic and might have been referring to the colour palette's lack of restraint. What a reach.

The "best" example of all this is Jason Wee's 16 pixels from the bangs of Miranda Hobbes, where Dr Ronny Shapiro's cum landed, after his wife performed tantric masturbation on his root chakra, as part of her demonstration for a sex class:

Which turns out as repetitive monochrome squares. Like Mondrian but without the colour or variety in geometry.

For some reason, photography & video filming were strictly banned, unlike in the rest of the establishment. Probably to avoid incremental controversy from prudish quarters. Not that there was much that was controversial; maybe the gay paintings, which didn't even show gay sex - but gay people existing isn't erotic:

According to the exhibition, all of these were gay-themed, but one of the figures in the top left work seems to be a woman. In any event, 1/3 of the remaining works isn't even clearly gay, and none of them show or allude to the act of sodomy.

In contrast, the Annabel Chong section of the exhibition was a relief. While it didn't seem to cohere with the rest of the exhibition, at least it was clearly erotic.

IIRC, the exhibition said this was the dress she wore for the gangbang. I am unable to confirm this from the images I can find of the event (I am not going to spend 98 minutes of my life watching it to more rigorously verify this)

More photos of works from the exhibition are available on the e-flux review, the ArtAsiaPacific review (which has bananas in a suggestive pose) and probably the most at Bakchormeeboy's review.

Links - 25th September 2026 (1 - US Media [including Washington Post])

The Washington Post: Can billionaire owners like Jeff Bezos save journalism? - The Hub

Nolte: Serial-Lying Washington Post Staff Demand New Sugar Daddy After Jeff Bezos Hands Out Pink Slips - "The disgraced, far-left Washington Post as we knew it was obliterated on Wednesday, and now the very same staffers who have spent decades annihilating the former newspaper’s credibility want a new sugar daddy to bail them out...   I wonder how Bezos feels about being demoted from “sole owner who poured hundreds of millions into this failing institution for years” to “steward.”  The arrogance.  The actual definition of “steward” tells you precisely what these insufferable Post staffers think of Bezos... the staff sees Bezos as an employee who is there to serve them.  Well, right about now, he’s serving them pink slips...        “In the last three years, The Post’s workforce has shrunk by roughly 400 people,” whines the Washington Post Guild.  That’s right. The writing has been all over the wall for three years, and not once did anyone have the moral courage to do a self-inventory and say, Maybe if we stopped lying, we would earn the trust of subscribers, advertisers, and the casual readers whose clicks increase our revenue?  Not.  Once.  All they’ve done over those three years is arrogantly carry on in the hopes that some idiot with too much money would come along and buy into their unearned self-importance.  Learn to Substack, serial liars.  Good riddance."

Thread by @haugejostein on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The bloodbath at The Washington Post today — roughly one-third of its staff has been laid off — illustrates the ruthlessly plutocratic and neoliberal nature of the US economy.  In the span of a single day, one of the world’s most prominent English-language newspapers is being both crushed and politically restructured at the whim of a billionaire.  It’s honestly jaw-dropping. Everything about it sends shivers down my spine — the complete absence of labour rights, and how the billionaire class can just casually destroy media they dislike.  This is certainly not what democracy looks like."
Max on X - ""... how the billionaire class can just casually destroy media they dislike." 🤣😆😂 The generosity of the "billionaire class" was the only thing keeping this relic alive on life support. Thanks for the laughably disconnected from reality opinion, London."
Paul on X - "Nick Shirley broke one of the biggest news stories in the last 20 years by simply talking to people and showing up with a camera and releasing that footage on X. The Washington post employs a 1000 people and hasn't done real journalism in close to 15 years. Being a relay for leftist power isn't journalism. That's what the Washington post is, a political relay. Nick Shirley is actually a journalist.
And the Somali fraud story wasn't a secret. I've been crowing about it for a decade as have others. The Washington post could have broke that story, they knew about it but it made Democrats look bad so it sat untouched for 15 years."

John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte on X - "Yeah, I believe the Washington Post this time.
•The ICE Detains Five-Year-Old Hoax
•The Hegseth ‘Kill Everybody’ Hoax
•Trump “Destroying” White House Hoax
•Photo of Starving Gaza Baby Hoax
•Israeli Troops Murdered Food-Seeking Palestinians Hoax
•Trump Tariffs Will Explode Prices Hoax
•Maryland Man Hoax
•Black Newborns Much More Likely to Die If Doc’s White Hoax
•Elon Musk Nazi Salute Hoax
•Mass Hysterectomies Performed on Immigrants Hoax
•The All-White Trump Party Hoax
•Springfield Bomb Threat Hoax
•Trump Called for Liz Cheney to Be Executed Hoax
•Violent Crime Down Under Biden/Harris Hoax
•Arlington Cemetery Hoax
•Kamala Was Never America’s Border Czar Hoax
•Russia Collusion Hoax
•Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Hoax
•Jussie Smollett Hoax
•Covington KKKids Hoax
•Very Fine People Hoax
•Seven-Hour Gap Hoax
•Russian Bounties Hoax
•Trump Trashes Troops Hoax
•Policemen Killed at Mostly Peaceful January 6 Protest Hoax
•Rittenhouse Hoax
•Eating While Black Hoax
•Border Agents Whipping Illegals Hoax
•NASCAR Noose Hoax
•Georgia Jim Crow 2.0 Hoax
•Trump Assaulted Secret Service Agents and Grabbed Steering Wheel of Beast Hoax
•MAGA Assaulted Paul Pelosi Hoax
•COVID Lab Leak Theory Is Racist Hoax
•Hunter Biden’s Laptop Is Russian Disinformation Hoax
•Joe Biden Will Never Ban Gas Stoves Hoax
•COVID Deaths are Overcounted Is a Conspiracy Theory Hoax
•Mass Graves of Native Children in Canada Hoax
•Trump Killed Japanese Koi Fish Hoax
•Trump Told People to Drink Bleach Hoax
•Hamas Hospital Hoax
•If Reelected, Trump Will Execute People Hoax
•The 900,000 Kids Hospitalized with Coronavirus Hoax
•Dozens of Environmental Hoaxes
•The Alfa Bank Hoax
•Libs of TikTok Murdered Non-Binary Teen Hoax
•Aaron Rodgers Sandy Hook-Truther Hoax
•‘Bloodbath’ Hoax
•Biden ‘Sharp-as-a-Tack’ Hoax
•Iowa Poll Hoa"

Meme - memetic_sisyphus @memeticsisyphus: "The Washington post last month wrote this article. The headline is completely false. The study did not explore the effects of racism at all. The study was showing there was a disparity, the “because of racism” part was added by the Washington Post journalist, because as another race correspondent at WaPo said, race drives subscriptions.  I am happy to say that the author of this piece has been fired today."
The Washington Post: "Nearly half of the mortality gap between Black and White adults can be traced to the cumulative toll of stress and inflammation, a new study shows. These two biomarkers bolster the "weathering hypothesis" that links systemic racism to health disparities."
Akilah Johnson @akjohnson1922: "In 2021, I was hired by @washingtonpost to cover health disparities & explore the way racism & social inequality affects health. 4 months ago, I became the generations' reporter exploring how health is experienced by different pple across the life course. Today, I was laid off."

Meme - Arthur in California @ArthurReturnss: "The mass layoffs at The Washington Post are unfortunate, but then I remember articles like this and think it's for the best."
"The racist legacy many birds carry. Birders grapple with complicated past linked to slavery, white supremacy"

Elon Musk on X - "Wired, The Atlantic, Guardian and many other propaganda legacy publications would die immediately if they had to support themselves. Donations from far left organizations disguised as charities are what keep them alive. They serve simply as a means of influencing Wikipedia, Google, etc as fake “authoritative” sources."

Daractenus on X - "The United States currently ranks below Ghana, Namibia and nearly every single European country when it comes to freedom of press. You don't get to lecture anyone on this."
Christian Heiens 🏛 on X - "This is just proof that Reporters Without Borders is, like countless other organizations and institutions, little more than a tool of the Progressive managerial elite.  The United Kingdom, which regularly imprisons its own people for memes they post online, is ranked #23 on this list. Germany, where it's a crime to "insult someone in public" or post "hate speech online", is ranked #5.  Meanwhile, the US is ranked #55.  There isn't a single person who isn't a total idiot who thinks the European continent has more press freedom than the United States."
David Bernstein on X - "A self-discrediting study, but not surprising, given that much of it is based on the views of so-called "Human rights experts" who hate the US and Israel. I can predict without even looking that Israel will be even lower than the US, despite having a very robust press corps."
Andrew Hammel on X - "I live in Germany and have published journalism in the US, UK, and Germany, and I can tell you this study is utterly laughable. Most European countries have laws allowing journalists to be severely fined for "insulting" or "disrespecting" politicians."
Larkin Magnus on X - "Like "Democracy", "Freedom" on the left just means "my preferred policy outcomes"."

Meme - Richard Hanania @RichardHanania: "Journalist thinks that making a prediction that can be judged to assess one's credibility is childish."
Nate Silver @NateSilver538: "Allan you wanna bet? Let's say 250k at even odds?"
John Harwood @JohnJHarwood: "grow up"
Nate Silver @NateSilver538: "Happy to bet you too bro."
Trust the 'Experts'! Even when they're always wrong. "Qualifications" are all that matter.

Lomez on X - "NPR Update: aside from screeching about Maduro, NPR spent the morning advertising their new January 6th retrospective, a massive, exhaustively researched, minute-by-minute breakdown of the day, the key actors, and its political implications and fallout. This was a huge and probably quite expensive effort.  The "Jan. 6 Archive" is of course uncompromisingly slanted in a way to make Trump and the events look maximally incriminating and to justify the years of lawfare against Trump and his allies that followed, and also to ignore all of the surrounding context of the summer of riots that preceded the election (let alone an honest appraisal of the election itself).  And say what you want about it, but I am struck again by the asymmetry in how the left understands "writing history" and preserving cultural memory to their own ends, while the right refuses to engage in comparable efforts, or leaves it to amateurs (as with its journalism) who, while meaning well, lack the polish and know-how to compete with their institutional adversaries.  We have just lived through a decade of the most brazen effort to remake American life in the image of the dumbest, most perverse, mentally-ill (literally) leftist ideology that has possibly ever existed––all with the consent and full buy-in from every corner of our ruling institutions. Is it possible the right can muster the resources and man-power (it wouldn't even be that expensive), to catalog all of this? To preserve its memory? To demonstrate its depravities and shame and permanently desecrate the reputations of every one who played along?  Here is the NPR page link. Take a look. The saying that "history is written by the victors" is not quite true. History is written by the people who make the effort to write history. It's really that simple."

REVEALED: New York Times contributor busted as Iranian spy - "A frequent contributor for The New York Times was revealed to be an Iranian spy and was charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Federal prosecutors reported that this Iranian-born political science author arrested Monday was paid in secret to write columns favorable to Tehran and lobby at least one American lawmaker on the global power's behalf.  A criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday in federal court in Brooklyn charged 63-year-old Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi with acting and conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). If convicted of both offenses, Afrasiabi faces the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison."
From 2021

Report: NPR’s Maher Refused Internal Demands to Resign “For the Good of Public Media” Before Loss of Funding - "the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) called on National Public Radio (NPR) CEO Katherine Maher to resign before all federal funding for both the CPB and NPR was cut off. As in the past, Maher and the NPR board chose their own agendas over the interests of their institution and public radio.  I have long been a critic of Maher since her inexplicable selection by the NPR board to lead the media organization. Despite years of objections to NPR’s overt bias, many critics genuinely wanted NPR to reverse course and adopt more balanced coverage. That is why, when NPR was searching for a new CEO, I encouraged the board to hire a moderate figure without a history of political advocacy or controversy.   Instead, the board selected Katherine Maher, a former Wikipedia CEO widely criticized for her highly partisan and controversial public statements. She was the personification of advocacy journalism, even declaring that the First Amendment is the “number one challenge” that makes it “tricky” to censor or “modify” content as she would like.  Maher has supported “deplatforming” anyone she deems to be “fascists” and even suggested that she might support “punching Nazis.” She also declared that “our reverence for the truth might be a distraction [in] getting things done.”  As expected, the bias at NPR only got worse. The leadership even changed a longstanding rule barring journalists from joining political protests.   One editor had had enough. Uri Berliner had watched NPR become an echo chamber for the far left with a virtual purging of all conservatives and Republicans from the newsroom. Berliner noted that NPR’s Washington headquarters has 87 registered Democrats among its editors and zero Republicans.  Maher and NPR remained dismissive of such complaints. Maher attacked the award-winning Berliner for causing an “affront to the individual journalists who work incredibly hard.”  She called his criticism “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.”  Berliner resigned, after noting how Maher’s “divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR” that he had been pointing out.  In her disastrous appearance before Congress, Maher sat next to PBS CEO Paula A. Kerger and dismissed criticism. What was not disclosed is that PBS agreed with some of us that, if Maher truly wanted to save federal funding and protect NPR, she would resign.   According to the Times, our calls for her resignation were being repeated internally. Instead, the board that made the foolish choice of hiring Maher chose their ideological and personal agendas over the interests of their institution . . . again.  In the meantime, Maher and others were going public, bewailing the threat to journalism and calling on citizens to do everything that they could to protect NPR. The only thing that they were not willing to do was admit their own failure.  We have seen the same pattern in academia.  The fact is that this academic echo chamber may be killing educational institutions, but the intolerance still works to the advantage of faculty who can control publications, speaking opportunities, and advancement with like-minded ideologues.  We have watched the same perverse incentive in the media where outlets are seeing plummeting readers and revenue. Journalism schools and editors now maintain that reporters should reject objectivity and neutrality as touchstones of journalism.   It does not matter that this advocacy journalism is killing the profession. Reporters and editors continue to saw at the limb upon which they sit due to the same advantage for academics. For reporters, converting newsrooms into echo chambers gives them more security, advancement, and opportunities.  Recently, the new Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis was brought into the paper to right the ship. He told the staff “let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”  The response from reporters was to call for owner Jeff Bezos to fire Lewis and others seeking to change the culture. The Post has been eliminating positions and just implemented another round of layoffs to address the budget shortfalls.  In the meantime, trust in the media is at record lows — paralleling the polling on higher education. The result is the rise of new media as people turn to blogs and other sources for their news.  At NPR, the board and Maher have led the organization into a complete and utter meltdown, resulting in the loss of millions in funding and a shrinking audience. However, it does not matter. CPB called on Maher to resign “for the good of public media.” It was not, however, good for her or her board. Socially and personally, these individuals are praised and promoted as ideological champions on the left. They were even willing to see the death of CPB to remain faithful to the agenda.  So, CPB died, NPR lost all funding, but Maher kept her job… and her agenda."

Pete Buttigieg rep tells 'aggressive' reporter to turn off camera at Ohio derail site
From 2023. Hostility to the press is only fascist if right wing politicians do it to the left wing press

Why Americans Hate the Media - The Atlantic - "Didn’t Jennings have some higher duty to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot? “No,” Wallace said flatly and immediately. “You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!”... He had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached. As Jennings said he agreed with Wallace, several soldiers in the room seemed to regard the two of them with horror. Retired Air Force General Brent Scowcroft, who would soon become George Bush’s National Security Advisor, said it was simply wrong to stand and watch as your side was slaughtered. “What’s it worth?” he asked Wallace bitterly. “It’s worth thirty seconds on the evening news, as opposed to saving a platoon.” After a brief discussion between Wallace and Scowcroft, Ogletree reminded Wallace of Scowcroft’s basic question. What was it worth for the reporter to stand by, looking? Shouldn’t the reporter have said something ? Wallace gave a disarming grin, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I don’t know.”... Jennings or Wallace might be back with the American forces—and could be wounded by stray fire, as combat journalists often had been before. When that happens, he said, they are “just journalists.” Yet they would expect American soldiers to run out under enemy fire and drag them back, rather than leaving them to bleed to death on the battlefield. “I’ll do it!” Connell said. “And that is what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get … a couple of journalists.” The last words dripped disgust... [Newt] Gingrich said. “The military has done a vastly better job of systematically thinking through the ethics of behavior in a violent environment than the journalists have.”... He did not try to explain the reasons a reporter might feel obliged to remain silent as the attack began—for instance, that in combat reporters must be beyond country, or that they have a duty to bear impartial witness to deaths on either side, or that Jennings had implicitly made a promise not to betray the North Kosanese when he agreed to accompany them. The soldiers might or might not have found such arguments convincing; Wallace didn’t even make them... When ordinary citizens have a chance to pose questions to political leaders, they rarely ask about the game of politics. They want to know how the reality of politics will affect them—through taxes, programs, scholarship funds, wars. Journalists justify their intrusiveness and excesses by claiming that they are the public’s representatives, asking the questions their fellow citizens would ask if they had the privilege of meeting with Presidents and senators. In fact they ask questions that only their fellow political professionals care about. And they often do so—as at the typical White House news conference—with a discourtesy and rancor that represent the public’s views much less than they reflect the modern journalist’s belief that being independent boils down to acting hostile. The limited curiosity that elite reporters display in their questions is also evident in the stories they write once they have received answers. They are interested mainly in pure politics and can be coerced into examining the substance of an issue only as a last resort. The subtle but sure result is a stream of daily messages that the real meaning of public life is the struggle of Bob Dole against Newt Gingrich against Bill Clinton, rather than our collective efforts to solve collective problems... Two days before the election many of the country’s most admired analysts had no idea what was about to happen. Yet within a matter of weeks these same people, unfazed, would be writing articles and giving speeches and being quoted about who was “ahead” and “behind” in the emerging race for the White House in 1996. As with medieval doctors who applied leeches and trepanned skulls, the practitioners cannot be blamed for the limits of their profession. But we can ask why reporters spend so much time directing our attention toward what is not much more than guesswork on their part. It builds the impression that journalism is about what’s entertaining—guessing what might or might not happen next month—rather than what’s useful, such as extracting lessons of success and failure from events that have already occurred. Competing predictions add almost nothing to our ability to solve public problems or to make sensible choices among complex alternatives. Yet such useless distractions have become a specialty of the political press. They are easy to produce, they allow reporters to act as if they possessed special inside knowledge, and there are no consequences for being wrong... If a reporter is sued for libel by a prominent but unelected personality, such as David Letterman or Donald Trump, he or she says that the offended party is a “public figure”—about whom nearly anything can be written in the press... Most journalists would eloquently argue the logic of this broad definition of public figures—until the same standard was applied to them... The analysts who are so clear-eyed about the conflict of interest in Newt Gingrich’s book deal claim that they see no reason, none at all, why their own finances might be of public interest... In 1992 political professionals had laughed at Ross Perot’s “boring” and “complex” charts about the federal budget deficit—until it became obvious that viewers loved them... There is an astonishing gulf between the way journalists—especially the most prominent ones—think about their impact and the way the public does. In movies of the 1930s reporters were gritty characters who instinctively sided with the common man... Since the early 1980s the journalists who have shown up in movies have often been portrayed as more loathsome than the lawyers, politicians, and business moguls who are the traditional bad guys in films about the white-collar world... The joke in these movies is how rapidly the pundits leap to conclusions, how predictable their reactions are, how automatically they polarize the debate without any clear idea of what has really occurred... the most depressing aspect of the new talking-pundit industry may be the argument made by many practitioners: the whole thing is just a game, which no one should take too seriously.
From 1996 too. Time to mock Fox News for being entertainment

Meme - Aesthetica: "One thing you realize if you travel abroad and catch a few minutes of their national news coverage is that anyone who watches the news in these countries is being conditioned to be the most retarded person on the planet. Picture a foreign smug leftist news dork giving their retarded opinion on an American smug leftist news dork's fake depiction of an event. That's the only news these people get about America. There's a boomer sitting in Canada as we speak who thinks Trump will be sent to prison for Russiagate any day now and he can't travel to Florida anymore because Trump will send him to El Salvador."
Li Jingjing: "It keeps getting crazier."
"Me reading news everyday as a Chinese *America using rifle to blow head off with lots of blood*"