/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Iran War Protests Break Out in US Cities
Small demonstrations have taken place in multiple cities across the United States over the past few days urging the Trump administration not to join Israel in military action against Iran. Protests were recorded in San Jose, California, on Tuesday as well as New York City and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Monday, with demonstrators holding up signs such as "hands off Iran." Newsweek contacted the U.S. State Department for comment on Wednesday via online inquiry form outside regular office hours.
https://www.newsweek.com/iran-war-protests-break-out-us-cities-2087453
https://archive.ph/aNS1o

House Democrat Under Fire for 'Reckless and Repugnant' Resolution Backing War on Iran
Sherman introduced the resolution Tuesday alongside Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) and 14 cosponsors, including Democratic Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.). The resolution praises Israel's attacks on Iran, characterizing them as "preemptive and proportional strikes" that "advance the vital United States national security interest in a nuclear-free Iran." The measure also "mourns the 24 Israelis killed and 590 Israelis wounded" by Iran's retaliatory attacks, but does not mention the more than 580 Iranians killed during the first five days of Israel's assault.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/brad-sherman-iran-war

Life-threatening heat wave in the Midwest and Northeast to kick off official start of summer
Over the next two days, more than 120 million people are under the threat for severe storms from the Midwest to the East Coast. The risk for severe weather – which could produce damaging wind, tornadoes, large hail and possible flash flooding – is at a level 3 out of 5 on Wednesday from Michigan to Missouri, including the cities of Indianapolis and Louisville. Meanwhile, the risk of severe weather for the cities of Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, Nashville and Texarkana is at a level 2 out of 5 on Wednesday.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/life-threatening-heat-wave-midwest-northeast-kick-off/story?id=122962124

With the Crypto Industry War Chest Looming, Senate Democrats Help GOP Pass Crypto Bill
Acting CEO and president of the Crypto Council for Innovation, Ji Kim, called the Senate's passage of the bill a "historic step forward for the digital asset industry," in a prepared statement shared in advance of the vote, according to the outlet CoinDesk. The Senate's passage of the bill came one day after the outlet The Lever reported that "a private group chat of Democratic Party operatives and crypto industry advocates has been secretly coordinating to push Democratic senators" to support the bill. The Lever reviewed the contents of a Signal chat which contained messages from venture capitalists, lobbyists, lawyers for crypto firms, former staffers on Capitol Hill, and others. Participants in the chat expressed the need for the Democrats to pass the bill in order to avoid alienating the crypto industry.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/senate-passage-genius

Japan's Nippon Steel completes its U.S. Steel takeover
The completed merger is under the same headline terms as the original agreement, including the $55-per-share price tag. But it also includes the commitment of $11 billion of new investments in U.S. Steel by 2028, with another $3 billion after that. The company's headquarters will remain in Pittsburgh (as originally anticipated); its key management and the majority of its board will be U.S. citizens.
https://www.axios.com/2025/06/18/us-steel-trump-nippon-takeover

Supreme Court upholds Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth
In a 6-3 ruling, the court said Tennessee can continue to enforce a ban on hormone therapy and other treatments. The central question in the case was whether Tennessee is simply regulating the practice of medicine or discriminating on the basis of sex. If it were the latter, the state would have to clear a much higher legal bar to defend its law. But the state does not have to meet that higher standard, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.
https://www.axios.com/2025/06/18/supreme-court-trans-youth-health-care

Kamala Harris Didn’t Lose Because of Racism
In mid-May of this year, former New York Times columnist and public intellectual Charles Blow declared on one of his social media accounts that those attributing President Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection primarily to former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline are obscuring “the racist, misogynist, nativist, risk-it-all, devil-may-care doom lust among the year’s electorate.” Blow went on to say that “rather than accept Harris, America chose the flame.” Within the liberal pundit class, the tendency to attribute Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss principally to racism or misogynoir (hatred of black women) runs deep. In a postelection interview on MSNBC, Princeton University distinguished professor of African American studies Eddie Glaude asserted of Trump’s reelection: “We chose a felon because we didn’t want to elect a black woman,” which means “we would rather destroy the republic than for that to have happened.” If I had a dollar for every time I happened upon a meme or social media post or found myself in conversation with friends or colleagues that echoed Blow’s and Glaude’s sentiments, I might be able to retire by the end of the year. I confess, I’ve never been thrilled by Blow’s racial moralizing. The fundamental problem with a moralistic discourse on race and inequality is that neither righteousness nor righteous outrage permit explication of context. Harris’s not terribly surprising loss was owed to many factors, not just the electorate’s racism or sexism. And Blow — who has written some very thoughtful columns on the issues informing support for Trump among Hispanics as well as black male discomfort with Harris-Walz — knows this, even if he’s not always comfortable with where context takes us.
https://jacobin.com/2025/06/harris-trump-democrats-race-reductionism

Modi’s New Doctrine: Unending War
IN the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, Prime Minister Modi, in a public address on May 12, set out a new doctrine consisting of three guidelines. These must be analysed and understood as they have serious implications for the strategic and security policies of the country. They also portend major consequences for peace and stability in the South Asian region. The three-point declaration is as follows: Firstly, if there is a terrorist attack, a fitting reply will be given. Retaliatory action will be taken at every place from where the roots of terrorism emerge. Secondly, India will not tolerate any nuclear blackmail. India will strike precisely and decisively at terrorists’ hideouts developing under the cover of nuclear blackmail. Thirdly, India will not differentiate between the government sponsoring terrorism and the masterminds of terrorism. This new doctrine was prefaced in the speech with the claim that by the afternoon of May 10, “we had destroyed the infrastructure of terrorism on a large scale. The terrorists were eliminated. We have destroyed the terror camps established in the heart of Pakistan. Therefore, when Pakistan approached and stated that it will not indulge in any sort of terror activities or military audacity further, India considered it.” He went on to say: “We have only suspended retaliatory action against Pakistan’s terror and military camps.” The declaration that India will militarily retaliate against each and every terror attack will result in limiting India’s capacity to choose from a range of options. It will effectively hand over the initiative on the strategic response to a bunch of terrorists. Any group of terrorists can conduct a terrorist strike to invite a military response, thereby unleashing an armed conflict with Pakistan. As Ajay Sahni, a well-regarded security expert, commented: “Declarations that any future terror attack on Indian soil will be treated as an act of war, and that Operation Sindoor is the ‘new normal,’ are trapping the country into an escalatory military response to undefined levels of terrorism.” (Frontline, May 25, 2025)
https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2025/0615_pd/modi%E2%80%99s-new-doctrine-unending-war

Karl Radek: Marxism and the Problems of War
AFTER the outbreak of war, the workers’ press printed statements from the old masters of scientific socialism in a variety of places. They aimed thereby to explain the attitude towards the war on the part of the majority of the Social Democratic fraction. One group – who would more usually mock any orientation of workers’ politics according to the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as some sort of orthodox worshipping of the line – bandied around passages of Marx’s writings as if they were a holy bequest. In protest at such activity, even the historian of German Social Democracy raised a caveat, pointing out that such usage left out of the picture the historical circumstances under which Marx and Engels took their positions on questions of war. And these are indeed historical conditions that are as similar or dissimilar to the current ones as the nightingale is to an owl. In the following few brief lines, we hope to outline what lay behind Marx’s and Engels’ judgement of the problems of war. First of all, it is necessary to point out that, as we might assume, the old masters of scientific socialism never betrayed their own method in their treatment of questions of war. Their method, that is, the mode of their scientific investigation, is comprised of the fact that they explained all manifestations of social life in their historical development in relation to the development of the productive forces. In the case of war, their method is manifest in the fact that the particular significance of each and every war is investigated in conjunction with economic developments. However cruel any particular war was, they would never be led down the path of simply wailing and groaning. They always asked what the sources of this war were, whether, in its violent and swift way, it ripped down a rotten old building, and whether or not a new life could bloom in the ruins left behind. Where the friend of humanity who lacks historical vision sees only blood and horror, a senseless slaughter, they often spied the ways of human progress, and new conditions of class struggle. We must, of course, apply their procedures to the current war. With the old masters’ and their pupils’ insights into the current economic crisis at hand, we are compelled to discover the great economic contradictions that have brought about the world war. Had the Social Democratic parties of the nations involved in war thought about the legacy of our teachers, they would all agree today on the judgement of the character of the war. This intellectual unity would have prevented the collapse of mutual trust between these Social Democratic parties, even if the popular masses were not in a position to thwart the outbreak of war, and were still compelled to march onto the battlefields. Here is evident what great practical significance Marxist theory possesses, but that is the case only if one refuses to treat it as a collection of quotes and ciphers, as a recipe book. Instead, one should use it as an intellectual guide, which allows one to find one’s way through the muddle of facts.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/radek/1914/xx/war.html

Thanks Newz Anon

>>2337850
The flag on the left represents the unmarked mass graves of Iranian workers

PFLP were a lapdog for the nationalists but at least they were popular now they're the lapdog of the Islamists and dead