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*"

Links - 24th September 2026 (2 - Corporate Wokeness)

PwC Drops Diversity Mandate for Internship Amid Legal Pressure - "PwC has shed explicit diversity criteria for an internship program after the firm faced scrutiny from a conservative activist group that opposes corporate racial diversity efforts... Last year’s report characterized the firm’s “Start” internship for aspiring leaders as being “uniquely designed for high-performing college sophomores and rising juniors who self-identify as members of traditionally underrepresented minority groups in the professional services industry, including protected veterans and/or individuals with disability.”"

bad_stats 🕜💵🖨️🕣 on X - "Hey bestie! Could you point me to the part of the article that is evidence for the claim that Boeing is using DEI to intentionally lose the competition with Comac because the WEF is Maoist?"
James Lindsay, full varsity on X - "Here's their 2024 SEC filing indicating they hit their DEI and climate targets but not production or quality targets."
Ryan Whitten 🇺🇲🗽 on X - "The way they scored this makes it look like they did really well on their goals, when the data suggests they were well short of the goals that actually matter.  When you remove the 80% from the worthless DEI goals, they are well below 100%.  Alramingly, they have not reduced rework at all, suggesting that may actually be going up.  This is direct evidence that these ESG/DEI initiatives are counterproductive, but if you knew what they are to begin with, you'd expect that.  Sad that this is happening to the company that my grandfather retired from, and that brought us the B-17, among other great aircraft."
James Lindsay, full varsity on X - "It's not exactly that our corporations are committing suicide. It's that they're being suicided, like Jeffrey Epstein. DEI and ESG are designed to misdirect priorities and scarce resources into meaningless and detrimental crap that leaves a company weak and uncompetitive."

Meme - David Pinsen @dpinsen: "There’s a good chance this guy got promoted to this role partly because a drug addict with heart disease tried to buy a banana with a counterfeit $20."
New York Post @nypost: "Boeing ousts head of troubled space unit after astronauts left stranded, billions in losses"
Boeing ousts Ted Colbert, head of troubled space unit after Starliner debacle - "Boeing’s defense, space and security unit, one of its three main businesses, has lost billions of dollars in 2023 and 2022, which executives attributed in large part to cost overruns on fixed-price contracts."
Ted Colbert was in the role from March 2022, but left wingers will continue to look around for excuses

BREAKING: Boeing jets come out as trans-safe: they are not safe but they 'identify as safe' • Genesius Times - "  The announcement comes as a surprise to many, but Boeing insists that they are simply embracing the true nature of their planes. “Our planes have always wanted to be safe, and we are proud to support them in their journey,” a Boeing spokesperson said in a press conference. “We’re not just talking about physical safety here – although our planes are impeccably crafted and rigorously tested by the most diverse people on Earth. No, we’re talking about a deeper, spiritual safety. Sure, wheels fall off, doors fly off in flight, and fuel leaks are common, but our planes identify as safe, and that’s what really matters.”...   Boeing CEO Jack Ace said, “If you deny our jets’ self-identified safety profile, you are a transphobe.”"

blighter on X - "people are justly amazed at this but it’s important to remember SpaceX isn’t our only space company and by many metrics not even our most successful. Boeing, e.g., is light years ahead on both amount spent and workforce diversity, both of which are key drivers of success."

Anti-Israel Google employees arrested after occupying CEO's office with demands against ‘apartheid state’ - "Google employees with anti-Israel demands of ceasing “business with the Israeli apartheid government and military” were arrested on Tuesday after they took over Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian's California office. Occupying the space for over 8 hours, the employees broadcast their Pro-Palestine protest on a Twitch livestream, which ultimately also captured their arrest. Google employees arrested from Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian's California office. Google employees arrested from Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian's California office.  The ‘notech4apartheid’ video shows a man informing the employees that they've been put on administrative leave before he asks them to leave voluntarily. To which, the protesters refused, leading to their arrest by the police... The employees have driven a case for Google to divest from its business ties with the “Israeli apartheid government and military” and put an end to “harassment, intimidation, bullying and silencing” of Palestinian and Muslim workers. They've also pushed the organisation to focus on the “health and safety crisis” that caused concern among all those employees who can't bear with their office hours and hard work being used to “enable a genocide.”"
When you hire SJWs...
No doubt they will play the victim

Spare us the hypocrisy of the woke multinationals - "The main thrust of the reforms is that voters would need photo ID or a utility bill to back a request for an absentee vote, instead of the present system where the signature on the application for the vote is checked against that on the returned ballot... It’s yet another example of corporate ethical activism, whereby companies get terrifically worked up about issues that have really got nothing to do with them. It’s part of corporate overreach generally. In Ireland, during the referendum on gay marriage, Google and Facebook let it be known that they were very pro-change. Then there was Disney, making a stand against transphobia by, in an entirely pointless gesture, sacking the actress Gina Carano from The Mandalorian after she appeared to send up trans pronouns. This is the same Disney that filmed part of their live-action version of Mulan in Xinjiang province, where the Uyghurs are in mass detention... Where global capitalism does have an ethical duty, it is to pay taxes in the countries where they operate, reflecting the profits they make there. But on this, Google et al are not terribly forthcoming either. My impression is that they positively go out of their way to avoid paying what normal people would consider a fair rate and use their corporate clout with the US government to argue their case.  They also have a responsibility to see that their supply chains are clean, viz, that the companies contributing to their product aren’t involved in iffy practices in developing countries or underpaying their workers.  You might even assume that big corporations would consider the ethics of investing in countries that violate human rights. And yet Coca-Cola’s Curt Ferguson, head of its Far East operations, recently declared that its biggest market in the future would be China, where it already employs thousands of people.  The difference, of course, is that taking a stand on China really would affect the bottom line. Ethics and global capitalism… they’re a funny mix, aren’t they?"

Four in 10 less likely to stay with their company if asked to wear pronoun badges - "The finding comes in research backed by Kemi Badenoch on the “politicisation” of business, which shows that half of people think businesses have become too concerned with taking political positions on contested issues.  The Business and Trade Secretary said people wanted businesses to focus on serving customers, “not activism or political causes”... only 7 per cent answering that they would be more likely to want to work for the company. Three quarters (75 per cent) believe that companies should prioritise hiring on merit, regardless of race or gender, rather than hiring to create a diverse team. And 50 per cent of people agreed that businesses have become too concerned with taking political positions on contested issues, with only 14 per cent disagreeing.  When asked about businesses taking political stances on a range of issues – including Black Lives Matter, immigration, Palestine and transgender rights – in each case, about half of people said it would make no difference to whether they would buy their products.  In each case, a similar or larger number of people said they would be less likely to buy the products than said they would be more likely to buy."

Opinion: No reliable evidence that ESG investing produces above-average returns - "Despite growing skepticism among investors, as evidenced by their withdrawal of billions of dollars from ESG equity funds so far in 2024, many finance industry leaders continue to claim that ESG-focused investing produces above-average returns... The study tracks 310 companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange from 2013 to 2020. It finds that neither ESG rating upgrades nor downgrades were related in a statistically significant way to the stock market performance of companies. That firms’ ESG ratings changes — which when released, are effectively new information for investors — are not consistently related to financial returns, means ESG ratings are likely not relevant to the expected future profitability of publicly listed companies in Canada. This of course raises the question: if new information (i.e., ratings changes) about a company’s ESG-related practices is not statistically related to equity returns from investing in that company, why do money managers continue to pay for the services of ESG rating companies? One possible reason is that managers pass a substantial share of the costs along to customers who are willing to sacrifice financial returns (because of higher management fees) in order to express their commitment to environmental sustainability and other social causes. Another possible reason is that promoting ESG-focused investment alternatives appears to have been, at least until recently, an effective marketing tool... because asset managers typically do charge higher fees for ESG-focused mutual funds, ESG investment strategies are more likely to underperform than overperform conventional investment strategies."

Bruce Pardy: Corporate Canada betrayed capitalism. Now it has been betrayed - "After years of colluding with climate hysteria and betraying capitalism, Canadian companies have been dumped at the curb. On June 20, Bill C-59 received Royal Assent... Businesses cannot claim that their products or practices help to protect against climate change or provide other environmental benefits unless they can prove the claims are true. The provisions amend the Competition Act and make climate and other environmental claims subject to the same regulatory regime as false advertising... Over the course of decades, Western countries, but nowhere more than Canada, have undergone a cultural revolution. Accelerating climate activism, aggressive social justice ideology and managerial government have changed the landscape. Business elites, instead of defending capitalism, competition, open markets, the rule of law and other values of Western civilization, decided to switch rather than fight. To protect their own prosperity and influence, corporate leaders learned to speak the language and adopt the norms of progressive collectivism. They became cheerleaders for the new regime. Many came to believe in it themselves. Companies took on new roles. The social responsibility of business became not merely to increase its profits, as Milton Friedman famously insisted, but to serve as social welfare agencies. They were not just to obey the law and deliver products and services that people wanted to buy, but to pursue social and environmental causes. They would serve the interests not just of their shareholders but their “stakeholders,” as “Environmental, Social and Governance” (ESG) models demanded. In their marketing and rhetoric, they embraced climate action, corporate social responsibility, social licence, “equity, diversity and inclusion” (EDI) and social justice. They promoted the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are a blueprint for socialist managerialism. The Business Council of Canada endorsed carbon pricing and Canada’s climate plans. Major oil companies promoted net zero and repeated the kinds of claims that governments themselves made: that climate action in Canada helps to prevent the climate from changing. Such claims are patently false. Even if you believe in anthropogenic climate change, if your country doesn’t contribute much to the problem, cutting its contribution isn’t a solution. Bringing Canadian carbon emissions to zero would make no measurable difference to anything. Countries that together produce far and away most of the emissions on Earth have no intention of changing their paths. And who can blame them? If I were them, I would do the same. Canada excels at climate boondoggles. Carbon taxes are just more money for government coffers that do not necessarily reduce emissions, if that actually mattered. Wind and solar power, a lucrative source of government largesse that some businesses have adeptly saddled up to, don’t replace fossil fuels. Carbon capture and storage, perhaps the most pathetic pretend of them all, is a breathtakingly expensive symbolic gesture that cannot be applied at scale. The Paris accord and its net zero aspirations are climate fairy tales. Canadian business leaders would never say any of this. That was the deal: pay homage to the climate gods, and you can be on the team. But now they can’t. Progressive statism has never been about the climate, or transgenderism, or whatever the cause du jour. The target has always been Western values and principles. Free enterprise is anathema to its aspirations, and as it turns out, so is prosperity itself. Canadian companies have betrayed the economic principles of their own society. How does government change one side of a bargain? When there is no other side. The Canadian business community still does not understand the point of the revolution. There can be no survivors. Surely, they sputter, you don’t mean us."

Leading Report on X - "BREAKING: Toyota has announced it will no longer sponsor LGBTQ parades and events and will no longer make efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)."

The hottest trend in executive leadership: Bringing back the White Guy
Greedy companies are more evil than they are greedy, because everyone knows that diversity is the way to earn more money (of course they cite the crap "research" from consulting firms, even though McKinsey's claim has never replicated and they refuse to disclose their methodology, and other research explicitly contradicts the claim)

City of London has given up on inclusion, Black workers say

American Airlines' focus on ESG in retirement plan is illegal, US judge rules - "A federal judge in Texas on Friday said American Airlines (AAL.O), opens new tab violated federal law by basing investment decisions for its employee retirement plan on environmental, social and other non-financial factors... O'Connor said American had breached its legal duty to make investment decisions based solely on the financial interests of 401(k) plan beneficiaries by allowing BlackRock (BLK.N) , opens new tab, its asset manager and a major shareholder, to focus on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) factors."

BlackRock Exits Net Zero Alliance for Asset Managers Amid Wall Street Exodus - Bloomberg

How to Put Woke Capital Out of Business - "Vivek Ramaswamy opens his book on the perils of woke capitalism by declaring himself a traitor to his class...   Two of his closest advisors resigned immediately. He received indignant emails from friends and employees. Less than three weeks later, he stepped down as CEO of the company he founded. He could have kept quiet, mouthed the diversitarian platitudes, and remained in good standing with the credentialed elite who run America. But Ramaswamy ultimately chose to speak out against corporate wokeness: “Why am I defecting? I’m fed up with corporate America’s game of pretending to care about justice in order to make money. It is quietly wreaking havoc on American democracy.”  There is something admirable about Ramaswamy’s commitment to honesty in such a dishonest age. The fundamental lie at the heart of woke capitalism deeply bothers him. Corporations and the oligarchs who run them pretend to care about social justice above all else when in fact they pursue profits with little concern for justice, social or otherwise.  Nike stands with Colin Kaepernick, but not with the children and Uighur political prisoners who work in its sweatshops. Uber supports Black Lives Matter, but not its drivers who want to be classified as employees rather than independent contractors. The NBA’s management and star players criticize the President of the United States but rebuke critics of the Chinese Communist Party. “In the fight for justice,” Ramaswamy concludes, “for-profit corporations make fickle friends.”  Ramaswamy is not just an indignant moralist. He understands how the lies serve the corporate oligarchy. Woke capitalism is “about using trendy social values as a trick to generate more profits… [it’s about corporations] creating a new narrative of social purpose to disguise their old-school greed. The social causes simply serve as a form of reputational laundering for those same companies’ profit-seeking.” This concept of reputational laundering—which might be more accurately called “moral laundering”—is absolutely key to understanding woke capitalism.   The cheap social-justice talk and the tax-deductible donations to progressive causes do not just draw attention away from questionable business practices. They crown corporations “with a patina of moral authority” and, as such, shield them from the fury of left-wing activists. Performative wokeness puts corporations on the right side of the Manichean divide between the irredeemable cis-white-hetero-Christian patriarchy and everyone else.  As Joshua Mitchell has explained, such behavior is not intended to signal virtue so much as innocence. We are not guilty of racism, the corporations proclaim. And in our age, that is the only guilt that matters. Economic exploitation, greed, and dishonesty are, by contrast, no longer cardinal sins—if they remain sins at all.   Ramaswamy wrote his book not merely to denounce hypocrisy. He thinks that the unholy marriage between wokeness and capitalism ultimately represents the “death of our democracy.” He indicts woke capitalism for creating a system in which “business elites [tell] ordinary Americans what they’re supposed to do and how they’re supposed to think. Each presents an equal affront to American democracy.” His critique is mostly directed at “this top-down elitism.”... Corporate wokeness is a lagging indicator, yet another instance of trickle-down leftism. What began in the 1960s in the Civil Rights movement, Black Power, second wave feminism, and the New Left has since infected every major institutional sector in America, including the last bastions of the old America: the churches and the military. Wokeness is now anchored in our laws, celebrated in our culture, and affirmed by our elites.  Nowhere is this more evident than in Silicon Valley...
'If Twitter has a moral obligation to censor misinformation and offensive speech in public tweets and private direct messages, does Google have an obligation (and therefore justification) to censor private emails? Will Verizon say it has a responsibility to stop hate and conspiracy from spreading via text messages? If text messages become fair game, then why not live phone conversations too?'
Ramaswamy sees what so many establishment conservatives and libertarians refuse to see: in the eyes of the woke Left, we on the Right are all racists who should be made untouchables. Censorship creep is real... If corporations or CEOs choose to engage in social activism, then they should not enjoy the legal privilege of protection from lawsuits. That privilege, after all, was only afforded to encourage risk-taking in pursuit of profit—not social activism in pursuit of leftist applause.   Ramaswamy is well aware that corporations and CEOs may simply claim, in response, that everything they do, including the woke propaganda, is in the service of profit. To which, he says, good! This would “reveal the true essence of stakeholder capitalism for the self-interested farce that it is, in a way that would enlighten consumers and citizens alike about the true motivations of today’s newly woke capitalist class.” Such a defense, of course, would not necessarily hold up in court, and executives would therefore think twice “before writing a check to BLM or exhorting their customers to support Joe Biden or Donald Trump or whatever else it is that they feel an impulse to do from their seat of corporate power.”... Last, is an interesting idea to protect employees from wokeness in the workplace. Ramaswamy convincingly argues that woke ideology fits the EEOC’s definition of a religion and, as such, cannot be imposed on employees. Your boss should no more be able to fire if you deny the divinity of Christ, than if you affirm that all lives matter. Ramaswamy would thus extend the protection of the Civil Rights Act to cover political opinions both on and off the job."

Jerry quits Ben & Jerry’s, saying its independence on social issues has been stifled : r/Economics - "Unilever bought Ben & Jerry's 25 years ago. No one in that era had any idea what social would mean in the future. Today, regardless of where you stand, it's almost a no win situation."
"I just was watching an old Mister Rogers clip and the comments today are “wow Mister Rogers is apparently a modern right wing extremist full of hate” LOL"

Jerry quits Ben & Jerry’s, saying its independence on social issues has been stifled : r/Economics - "Jourdan had it right decades ago, republicans buy shoes too.  Plus there's ways to signal political lean without being partisan. Nobody questions where Patagonia would sit on the political spectrum, but they're not running off conservative customers by making public statements taking stances. From a business standpoint, signaling can be very good, but statements can be very bad."
I>Right wingers were claiming this was because he wanted to diss Charlie Kirk, and were making the usual "Everyberg Singlestein Timeowitz" and "every. single. time." comments, but really he just wants to bash Israel, and ironically that's what many of those right wingers want to do too.

Opinion: By embracing defence, ESG reveals its underlying illogic - "After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and new wars in the Middle East, ESG has been adjusting. Defence is being reconsidered, reframed and quietly welcomed back into portfolios. But nothing about defence itself has changed. Weapons still do what they have always done: kill and destroy. If an entire industry can move from “unacceptable” to “strategically necessary” without changing its nature, the issue isn’t the industry. It’s the framework judging it. Start with a simple question: what allows people to live, function and improve their condition over time? By that standard, both defence and energy are non-negotiable. Defence protects societies from external threats. Energy makes societies possible in the first place. You don’t get modern agriculture, transportation or health care without it. You certainly don’t get a functioning defence sector without it. And yet ESG now treats these two pillars of modern life very differently, increasingly including defence but still largely boycotting traditional energy ... Now picture a military built on the energy logic ESG prefers . Missile systems function only when the wind picks up. Air defence performs nicely on clear afternoons but fades out after sunset or on cloudy days. Ground operations run on intermittent power — with backup systems that may or may not carry the load when things get serious. No one would design a defence system that way; it would be national suicide. Yet that is the model being promoted for the energy systems that underpin the entire economy. In defence, reliability is sacred because failure is immediate and visible. In energy, because the consequences of unreliability may accumulate more slowly, reliability standards have been downgraded. Instead, we’ve pushed toward sources that are diffuse, weather-dependent and heavily reliant on extensive backup to make them usable at scale. ESG is less about identifying actual economic value and more about setting politically correct conditions on investment . Meet the criteria and doors open. Miss them and they close, whatever you actually produce or how useful it is. That changes the nature of the market. It becomes less about performance and more about ideological alignment. Companies spend more time documenting, reporting, and anticipating regulatory compliance because that is what determines access. Whether they contribute meaningfully to human well-being becomes secondary. Defence is now being folded into ESG because excluding it has become impossible to justify"