/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Aguada mayor refutes ACLU’s assertion regarding municipal police collaboration in ICE raids
Aguada Mayor Christian E. Cortés Feliciano on Wednesday refuted statements made by Fermín Arraiza, legal director of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In a press conference the previous day, Arraiza alleged that members of the Aguada Municipal Police had participated alongside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the unlawful arrests of individuals with an undefined immigration status.
https://www.sanjuandailystar.com/post/aguada-mayor-refutes-aclu-s-assertion-regarding-municipal-police-collaboration-in-ice-raids

KFC and Taco Bell restaurants close across Puerto Rico as they seek new franchise partner
Puerto Rico’s first KFC restaurant opened in 1967, while Encanto Restaurants began operating Taco Bell in 1985, according to the company. Encanto Restaurants also operates Pizza Hut and IHOP restaurants in the U.S. territory. Overall, it operates 180 restaurants on the island and employs more than 3,000 people.
https://apnews.com/article/kfc-taco-bell-puerto-rico-close-encanto-yum-27380d9d90bffe9cc7def8f873b0a65c

ICE rapidly re-arresting immigrants released after winning court petitions
Increasing arrests and detentions have led to immigrants filing more than 91,000 habeas petitions as they seek to challenge their detentions, according to research by ProPublica. More petitions have been filed since 25 January than during the past three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term, combined, the outlet found.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/nov/02/immigrants-released-after-court-petitions-ice-arrest

Ex-Chicago FBI chief says he was ousted over a failed protesters case, sues Justice Department
Douglas DePodesta, a 24-year veteran of the FBI, says in the suit against top Justice Department officials that federal prosecutors pushed “politically motivated prosecutions” against Chicago’s demonstrators before gathering evidence. He says his superiors told him that FBI Director Kash Patel wanted him fired, and he stepped down against his will this summer.
https://apnews.com/article/chicago-fbi-chief-lawsuit-immigration-protests-736be23019542b9346b8a55e349c85a3

‘A despicable betrayal’: Democrats incensed by Haley Stevens’s endorsement of Mike Rogers
Following the extraordinary public rupture on Sunday, El-Sayed’s campaign said it raised more than $2.4m, a fundraising record in the final days of a race that could determine control of the US senate. The Democrat’s campaign said more than 26,000 people contributed for the first time on Sunday.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/nov/02/democrats-reaction-haley-steven-mike-rogers

California's Scott Wiener Has a Record of Opposing Gaza Ceasefire, Despite Recent Claim
The candidate for California’s 11th Congressional District recently said that he supported a ceasefire in late 2023. At the time, he lobbied against a local ceasefire resolution in San Francisco.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/scott-wiener-congress-israel-gaza

Investigators say Learjet may have broken up before crashing in Florida
The National Transportation Safety Board said on Monday a Learjet 60 that crashed on Sunday in a residential area in Palm ​Beach County, Florida, killing all nine people on board, may have ‌broken up before hitting the ground at high speed.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/investigators-say-learjet-may-have-broken-up-before-crashing-florida-2026-11-02/

Out of the EU, for a Socialist Austria! :Deputy Chairman of the Party of Labour of Austria
Even a quarter of a century after the last World Savings Day of the schilling era, nostalgia for Austria’s former currency remains widespread, as sociologist Klaus Kraemer explained to Austria’s public broadcaster ORF on Saturday. But this sentiment reflects more than nostalgic memories: it also expresses legitimate concerns about the economic future. And hardly without reason. The capitalist crisis, high inflation, rising rents, relentless attacks on the welfare state and years of declining wages have left their mark on people’s lives. On the contrary, what they once regarded as secure is being systematically dismantled, piece by piece, in the interests of capital. Neither a return to the schilling nor simply withdrawing from the European Union can resolve these problems. What is needed is the organized economic and political struggle of the working class against the dictatorship of the banks and corporations.
https://www.idcommunism.com/2026/11/out-of-eu-for-socialist-austria.html

Workers of the World, Invest: the corporate adventures of The Canary
2026 was not the first time the Canary experienced turmoil. It is a left project after all. Historically, it faced significant advertising revenue issues due to a boycott campaign organised by a group called Stop Funding Fake News. In 2022, it experienced an internal takeover by staff and was turned into a worker co-op. In the March 2025 text, the Canary Workers Coop describing the takeover as a “workers’ revolution”, shared some details of their investigation into the former Canary management. “Even by the standards of corporate capitalist criminals, the Canary finances and systems were a mess. Our latest set of official accounts were a veritable clusterfuck of irregularities.”, the workers said. Further, the workers describe the practice of the management paying themselves dividends and how this was beneficial to them in terms of easing their personal tax burden as well as a tool to hide the disparities between the regular worker pay and the pay of the management team. Sadly, the workers’ revolution at the Canary appears to be short-lived, for only a few months after the March 2025 text, the Canary quietly went back to the more corporate structure and indeed acquired an external corporate investor. The investor was one Cecil Hetherington, a millionaire Northern Irish businessman. Mr Hetherington isn’t the usual suspect for injecting money into left projects. He made his fortune through various disruptive business model enterprises, most notably the website Used Cars NI. He is also a chairman of PropertyPal. The money, in the hefty sum of 2 million British pounds, didn’t arrive at the Canary as a donation and instead it came with significant small print. Looking at the Companies House filing history for Canary Media Limited, a moderately careful reader should not struggle to note that on 8th August 2025, Mr Hetherington’s firm, Ulidia Investments Limited, was listed as the entity with significant control, holding “more than 25% but not more than 50% of the shares in the company [Canary Media Limited].” The same day, Mr Cecil Robert Hetherington was appointed as a director of Canary Media Limited. These actions effectively ended the life of the Canary Worker Coop.
https://organisemagazine.org.uk/2026/10/30/workers-of-the-world-invest-the-corporate-adventures-of-the-canary/

The power and limits of the Soviet planned economy
This article is the third instalment of our 12-part series ‘The Hungarian Revolution: 70 years on’.
It is impossible to understand the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 without a clear picture of the economic basis of the country, and that of the Soviet Union and ‘Eastern Bloc’ as a whole, at that time. The abolition of capitalism in the Eastern Bloc after the Second World War helped to transform the balance of world forces. The Red Army’s victory over the forces of fascism was a success that rivalled the Russian Revolution itself. Today, the ruling class have heaped a mountain of lies and slander on top of the real history of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. Before the war, much of Eastern Europe consisted of backward, semi-colonial states ruled by weak military-police dictatorships. Millions languished in atrocious backward conditions, jointly oppressed by landlords, capitalists, nobility, and imperialists. At the end of the war, these gangsters, if they had not already fled, were kicked out by varying combinations of anti-fascist partisans, workers’ movements, and the Red Army, and their property was partially expropriated. However, the productive forces in Eastern Europe lay in ruins, and around 40 million people had been killed in the region. It is therefore one of the greatest achievements in human history that, under the planned economy, by 1960 life expectancy in the Eastern Bloc matched that of advanced capitalist countries. Yet the founding of workers’ states across Eastern Europe was severely compromised by Stalinism and bureaucracy, which sabotaged the establishment of healthy workers’ states. Instead of democratic workers’ control of industry, the bureaucracy took control and management of it ‘on their behalf’. The huge advancements made possible under the planned economy occurred despite the Stalinist bureaucracy, which fostered mismanagement, corruption, and waste. The eventual collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union was used by the capitalist class around the world as evidence for the hollow conclusion that socialism simply does not work. Marxists fundamentally disagree with this false conclusion, and endeavour to uncover the real reasons behind the disastrous restoration of capitalism.
https://communist.red/the-power-and-limits-of-the-soviet-planned-economy/