If you think the collapse of the Soviet Union was good for the people, think again.

In the 1990s, the Soviet Union fell apart, and Russia began moving towards a market economy. However, this transition brought with it a severe economic collapse, widespread poverty, and a sharp rise in organized crime.

If you think the collapse of the Soviet Union was good for the people, think again.

Related:

Putin’s Rise to Power and His Fight Against The Russian Oligarchs Created By Bill Clinton’s Puppet Boris Yeltsin

RESCUING BORIS

Laundering Yeltsin

Lies about the Holodomor, Joseph Stalin, & the U.S.S.R.

Washington’s Escalating War on Venezuela: Narco-Myths and Imperial Designs

Since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998 Washington has waged a relentless war against the Bolivarian revolution. The Trump administration continues to deploy political, economic and military measures aimed at the overthrow of Venezuela’s government and the reversal of advances in regional independence and integration: the two pillars of the Bolivarian cause. At the present juncture, it is critically important to make no mistake about Washington’s duplicitous policy towards the Maduro administration of simultaneous negotiation and intensifying aggression. This aggression is not a mere show to placate the Trump administration’s hard line anti-Chavista allies in Miami; it is an imminent threat to Venezuela’s national security and part of a strategy to recuperate U.S. domination of the Americas. 

Washington’s Escalating War on Venezuela: Narco-Myths and Imperial Designs

H/T: Venezuela & ALBA News 8.18.2025

Related:

Is Trump 2.0 Planning to Invade Venezuela?

María Corina Machado is the female Javier Milei (aka US Puppet)

Tag: 2024 Venezuelan Presidential election

Here’s your Facebook “whistleblower”

WEF

‘Careless People’ author testifies to Senate, as bipartisan pressure builds on Mark Zuckerberg

Wynn-Williams testified that Meta censored a Chinese dissident at the request of Chinese officials, and that the dissident was Guo Wengui, a federally convicted fraudster and MAGA-friendly ally of far-right activist Steve Bannon. Wynn-Williams said Facebook’s claim that a 2017 suspension of Guo’s account stemmed from a temporary glitch was a lie, and that the decision to temporarily kick him off the platform actually came as a result of pressure from a Chinese official.

Stone, the Meta spokesperson, said in a statement that Guo “faced account restrictions because he shared personally identifiable information such as passport numbers, social security numbers and addresses,” The Washington Post reported.

After downloading the book and searching for mentions of Palestine, the sole reference I found involved the author criticizing Facebook Maps for labeling a location in Israel as Palestine (p.71)—a claim I find dubious, given the platform’s well-documented history of censoring Palestinian content. Most Palestinian activists are likely aware of this pattern, as evidenced by countless reports and articles easily accessible through a simple Google search for “Facebook censorship of Palestine.”

Related:

Read More »

On Tariffs, It’s Good to Be “Tim Apple”

Tariffs are advertised in the name of helping American workers, but what do you know? They turn out to favor the powerful and politically connected. That’s the main message of President Trump’s decision to exempt smartphones and assorted electronic goods from his most onerous tariffs.

On Tariffs, It’s Good to Be Tim Cook

Related:

Tim Cook gifted Donald Trump a $6,000 Mac Pro after he lowered tariffs on parts Apple needed from China

At the time Apple and Cook were applying a charm offensive to persuade then-President Trump to remove tariffs on certain components that came from China. Cook asked Trump if he could meet him in person to make Apple’s case, a gesture the former president found “impressive,” he told Bloomberg. Trump was particularly pleased at the time that Cook reached out, especially considering his acrimonious relationship with other tech CEOs. 

[2019] Apple dodges iPhone tariff after Trump confirms trade deal agreement with China

Although the trade deal affects billions of dollars worth of goods, it’s a particular victory for Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has personally worked to keep communication open with the Trump administration. Cook’s charm offensive culminated last month when he gave Trump a tour of a Mac Pro assembly plant in Texas. That computer is assembled in the United States, and Apple was granted tariff waivers for several of its components.

Lenin: Answers To An American Journalist’s Questions

Answers To An American Journalist’s Questions

1. The governmental programme of the Soviet Government was not a reformist, but a revolutionary one. Reforms are concessions obtained from a ruling class that retains its rule. Revolution is the overthrow of the ruling class. Reformist programmes, therefore, usually consist of many items of partial significance. Our revolutionary programme consisted properly of one general item—removal of the yoke of the landowners arid capitalists, the overthrow of their power and the emancipation of the working people from those exploiters. This programme we have never changed. Some partial measures aimed at the realisation of the programme have often been subjected to change; their enumeration would require a whole volume. I will only mention that there is one other general point in our governmental programme which has, perhaps, given rise to the greatest number of changes of partial measures. That point is—the suppression of the exploiters’ resistance. After the Revolution of October 25 (November 7), 1917 we did not close down even the bourgeois newspapers and there was no mention of terror at all. We released not only many of Kerensky’s ministers, but even Krasnov who had made war onus. It was only after the exploiters, i.e., the capitalists, had begun developing their resistance that we began to crush that resistance systematically, applying even terror. This was the proletariat’s response to such actions of the bourgeoisie as the conspiracy with the capitalists of Germany, Britain, Japan, America and France to restore the rule of the exploiters in Russia, the bribery of the Czechoslovaks with Anglo-French money, the bribery of Mannerheirn, Denikin and others with German and French money, etc. One of the latest conspiracies leading to “a change”—to put it precisely, leading to increased terror against the bourgeoisie in Petrograd—was that of the bourgeoisie, acting jointly with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries; their conspiracy concerned the surrender of Petrograd, the seizure of Krasnaya Gorka by officer-conspirators, the bribing by British and French capitalists of employees of the Swiss Embassy and of many Russian employees, etc.

Read More »

The State: A Product of the Irreconcilability of Class Antagonisms

The State: A Product of the Irreconcilability of Class Antagonisms

What is now happening to Marx’s theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don’t laugh!). And more and more frequently German bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the “national-German” Marx, who, they claim, educated the labor unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of waging a predatory war!

Netanyahu Brought the ICC Ruling on Himself and Now He’s Whining About Antisemitism

As always, the Israeli prime minister does not work to shape reality, but to shape the perception of reality ■ The attorney general knows that leaving her post would lead to the collapse of the State Attorney’s Office – and that Yariv Levin is hovering above like a voracious vulture

Netanyahu Brought the ICC Ruling on Himself and Now He’s Whining About Antisemitism