I’d like to thank the ICSS organizers for inviting me to talk about our – my and Vladimir L. Bobrov’s — latest book, Trotsky’s Comintern Conspiracy – the Case of Osip Pyatnitsky.
How can people support Luigi Mangione but vote in droves to deny health care to others?
Last week was a bizarre time to be queer on social media: Many cishet people voiced enthusiastic support for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, arguing that the health insurer’s denial of claims led to so many deaths that the murder was justified as retaliation. Meanwhile, Congress was passing a bill that would require an insurer (Tricare) to deny claims, and it was hard to get anyone to even pay attention to that.
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YouTube: Lavender & Red (Parts 25-29) (2005) by Leslie Feinberg. 🏳️🌈 History Meets ☭ History. Audiobook
Leslie Feinberg’s series on LGBTQ history, “Lavender & Red,” appeared in the Workers World Newspaper in 2004-2008.
Zelensky’s wear and tear (original)
For more than two and a half years, war has been the raison d’être of the Ukrainian state. The budget presented by Kyiv this week allocates more than 50% of the budget to the defence sector – to which must be added the cost of veterans – something that has been repeated since 2022. Maintaining the front, avoiding its collapse and ensuring that there is still enough support to continue fighting until the objectives are achieved is the priority of the government team, which has set aside practically all other obligations of the state, which today depends entirely on foreign subsidies that make it possible to pay salaries and pensions. One of the aspects that has completely disappeared under the cover of the unity demanded by the war is precisely domestic politics. The Russian invasion gave Zelensky’s team the opportunity to create for the president the image of a war leader, the representation of the nation, a savior capable of achieving what he sets out to do, the only person capable of rescuing the country from certain ruin.
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Authoritarians have a playbook when it comes to dealing with the media. It may not be written down anywhere, but the tactics are all too familiar to those with experience of these regimes: Demonize, detain (and if necessary even kill) — and defund. So it should ring alarm bells when supposed democracies engage in these behaviors. Israel’s decision on Sunday tocut funding for Haaretz — an internationally respected news outlet and Israel’s oldest newspaper — is the latest in Israel’s efforts to shut down criticism of its actions at home and to stifle coverage abroad.
Israel’s boycott of Haaretz is straight out of the authoritarian playbook
The incoming Trump administration is poised to pick up where the Biden administration has left off on the decades-spanning centerpiece of US foreign policy ‒ the encirclement and containment of China.
US Foreign Policy vs. China Continues Under Trump (archived)
Related:
AFPI: America First Policy Institute
The Walton Family Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and a coalition of fishermen’s associations and environmental institutions join forces to promote responsible fishing practices.
China’s A2/AD (ACE Concept/Joint All-Domain Operations)
I hold it to a sign of great prudence in men to refrain alike from threats and from the use of insulting language, for neither of these things deprives the enemy of his power, but the first puts him more on his guard, while the other intensifies his hatred of you and makes him more industrious in devising means to harm you.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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