/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

US Senate passes Russia sanctions bill championed by Lindsey Graham
The bill would impose new sanctions and visa bans on Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and top military commanders, as well as put tariffs of up to 500% on the country’s exports. It would also allow Donald Trump to impose levies of up to 100% on goods from countries that are the top five importers of Russian oil and gas.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/07/russia-sanctions-senate-passed-petroleum

FCC scraps limit on local TV ownership in win for media conglomerates
In a historic vote on Thursday morning, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted along party lines to overturn a key check against the consolidation of the television industry, throwing out a rule that prevented any one company from owning stations that collectively reach more than 39% of all US TV households.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/aug/06/fcc-overturns-limit-local-tv-ownership

ICE will release body camera video only when seen in the agency’s ‘best interests,’ policy says
After years of delays, ICE said its field officers nationwide will have body-worn cameras by the end of September. The rollout comes after recent fatal shootings by officers enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown have intensified pressure for accountability that the cameras could provide.
https://apnews.com/article/ice-body-cameras-officers-shootings-dab1b294c8dc412d9ef8557ccbebfd57

Airline workers reportedly decline to help US agents as Trump migrant crackdown accelerates
At one point, in Dallas, a federal agent went so far as to try to board a plane in search of a target. But the Southwest Airlines gate agent reportedly refused to allow the officer to do so without a warrant signed by a judge, and airline employees blocked ICE from seeing a computer screen while passengers were boarding.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/06/airline-workers-agents-immigration-crackdown

GOP plans socialism telethon at midterm convention
GOP operatives spent months compiling footage of Democratic figures — including left-wing commentator Hasan Piker and Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico — that they'll use throughout the convention to paint Democrats as outside the mainstream. Organizers will particularly focus on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, who backs Medicare for All and criticizes Israel.
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/07/gop-midterm-convention-gameplan
https://archive.ph/Y9f9W

MaineHealth will close Lincoln Hospital’s labor and delivery unit in December
The closure will mark the 12th maternity unit in Maine that has shuttered since 2015, leaving Lincoln County, Waldo County and Sagadahoc County without hospitals that deliver babies. The decision means fewer than half of Maine’s 34 hospitals will offer a place to give birth.
https://apnews.com/article/labor-delivery-mainehealth-lincoln-hospital-close-december-5f27dae0086adc0ff56aff5e6b409b96

‘Relentless in Its War on Offshore Wind,’ Trump Admin Kills More Projects
The German company RWE announced Thursday that it had reached a settlement with the US Department of the Interior to relinquish offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York, California, and Louisiana for $1.22 billion.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-offshore-wind-lease-buybacks

For 60 Years, The Battle of Algiers Has Inspired Resistance
Even before Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers premiered at the Venice Film Festival on August 31, 1966, the film had generated a lot of buzz. The jury presided over by Italian writer Giorgio Bassani gave the film the Golden Lion, the main award of the festival, “for the courage with which it tackled such a difficult and highly controversial historical and political issue, or for the vigor with which it was able to master such a subject.” Beyond the praise, the film was also met with various polemics, which continued well after its release. The French government’s delegation to Venice refused to attend both the screening and the award ceremony at the end of the festival because, in the words of its head representative (civil servant and author Philippe Erlanger), “we interpret the inclusion of the film in the festival as a sign of hostility toward France.” French film critics — who as always flooded the Italian city for the festival, as they represented the largest group of foreign journalists — did see the film but largely did not speak of it favorably: to mention just one, in Le Monde Yvonne Baby wrote how “Gillo Pontecorvo made the mistake of emphasizing — with irritating intensity (to which the music contributes greatly) — the heroism of the Algerian fighters, and of constantly filming, in close-ups and in a tragic twilight, tense, pained faces whose expressions. . . . evoke no emotion whatsoever.” France was not ready to talk about the Algerian war just four years after the humiliating withdrawal from the North African country. But what is Pontecorvo’s film about, and why does it still make sense to talk about it sixty years later?
https://jacobin.com/2026/08/algeria-battle-algiers-pontecorvo-film

Kshama Sawant’s Third-Place Finish Shows the Space for a Party of Our Own
In Washington’s 9th Congressional district, independent socialist candidate Kshama Sawant took over one in seven votes in Tuesday’s primary elections. At over 15 percent of the vote (accounting for 16,408 ballots, with more still being counted), this marked a third-place finish, coming behind Rep. Adam Smith, the Democratic candidate who won 51 percent of the vote, and Doug Basler, a Republican who carried 24 percent of the vote. In the calculus of the top-two primary system, the results effectively end her campaign. Smith and Basler will face off in the November elections. Yet these results obfuscate the crucial takeaway from the night. Sawant, an open and independent socialist ran against the two capitalist parties — including a 29-year Democratic incumbent who has won 15 straight elections in the district — and won a significant base of support in a district that stretches from south Seattle to deep into its suburbs. Despite not advancing to November, her campaign shows the space there is for class-independent politics and, with it, the necessity for the working class and the Left to fight for a party of our own.
https://www.leftvoice.org/sawant-third-place-own-party/

Locked Up and Criminalized: People on the Move Face a Broken System on Crete’s Shores
People on the move arriving on Crete are held in makeshift facilities where they have no rights, as authorities freeze asylum registration while implementing the EU’s contested new Migration and Asylum Pact. The abandoned Kitrenosis industrial complex sits along the highway connecting the cities of Rethymno and Heraklion, on Crete’s northern coast. The warehouses, disused for years, look out over a cliff that drops straight into the sea. Scattered across the outdoor lot are piles of objects hinting at a transient human presence: faded clothing, broken chargers, crumpled cigarette packs. … In November 2025, the Italian organization Operazione Colomba published a report confirming the deplorable conditions at Kitrenosis and the island’s two other temporary facilities: the former exhibition center Agia, located about twenty minutes from downtown Chania, and the old refrigerated storage unit inside the port of Heraklion. The report found that all three sites lacked basic infrastructure and essentials, such as beds, showers, toilets, and clean clothing, and suffered from frequent overcrowding and a lack of privacy. As of July 2026, all three facilities sit empty, a lull attributed to bad weather slowing arrivals. However, the latest data published by the independent organization Refugee Support Aegean puts the number of people who reached Crete in the first half of the year at roughly 8,500 — a figure confirming that the route from Libya to the island is now well-established, regardless of seasonal fluctuations.
https://unicornriot.ninja/2026/locked-up-and-criminalized-people-on-the-move-face-a-broken-system-on-cretes-shores/

>>2886965
>as well as put tariffs of up to 500% on the country’s exports

Looking forward to the coming famine being blamed on putin too