/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Unions and students seek Columbia University board reforms after Trump deal
The decision comes after more than two years of what they say is disenfranchisement over the way Columbia's board of trustees has handled several issues, including permitting the police to target the student body multiple times while they were protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza and capitulating to the Trump administration’s demands over alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/union-students-seek-reform-columbia-university-board-trump-deal

House Republicans vote to lift 20-year ban on mining near pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area
Congressional Republicans moved closer Wednesday to lifting a 20-year ban on mining near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, pushing a resolution to end the moratorium through the House despite environmentalists’ warnings that it could devastate a premier destination for campers, kayakers and canoeists. The resolution now goes to the Senate, and approval there would send it to President Donald Trump for his signature.
https://apnews.com/article/boundary-waters-mining-moratorium-congress-f30b8dc9575e64b4b9e957b86409577d

‘They’re Getting Nervous,’ Says Platner After GOP Drops $42 Million on Maine’s Susan Collins
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) boasted that the $42 million investment, most of which will go to an advertising blitz to help the vulnerable five-term senator cling to her seat in November, was the largest the GOP’s Senate Leadership Fund had ever spent in Maine.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/collins-gop-spending-platner-nervous

Prosecutors barred from reviewing material seized from Washington Post reporter
Natanson, who has closely reported on the ways the Trump administration has reshaped the federal government, had two laptops, two phones, a Garmin watch and other devices seized last week as part of an investigation into a government contractor’s alleged retention of classified materials, an action that press freedom groups decried as highly unusual and wildly inappropriate.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/21/washington-post-reporter-fbi-search

Foster youth organization sues Alaska children’s services for alleged lack of food and necessities
Facing Foster Care director Amanda Metivier said for years, she’s heard complaints from foster youth that they cannot afford to buy enough food or other necessities. “For a young person in the dorm who needs transportation to a therapy appointment, the state has a duty to cover that cost,” she said. “When the (college) commons close during winter break and there’s no meal plan, we hear from those youth who say, ‘I don’t know how I’m gonna eat during winter break.’”
https://apnews.com/article/lawsuits-alaska-amanda-metivier-courts-general-news-415add7e9f79949e295d38df14c1c143

Communist Party of the Philippines: Corruption, injustice, abuses drive Filipino youth to revolution
Over the past week or two, the US-Marcos regime has mounted a frenzied media and social media campaign to intimidate and threaten the Filipino youth, who, more and more are growing disenchanted amid deep and widespread social ills, and are being drawn to question the rotten ruling system and seek radical and revolutionary ways to end corruption, injustice and abuses by those in power. This campaign to intimidate and threaten the Filipino youth is part of Marcos’ arsenal of fascist tactics to maintain his grip on power and preserve the ruling system, by suppressing the youth’s and people’s aspirations for change. This blatant assault against the youth is spearheaded by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the NTF-Elcac, and their mercenary hacks behind the Marcos government’s propaganda machinery. They have mobilized funds to activate and coordinate their social media troll army to drown out posts critical of the Marcos government in a deluge of spam comments, and throw their weight around to push their narrative in the press and public discourse. The Marcos psyops campaign heightened after a student researcher from the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, 22-year old Jerlyn Rose Doydora, died on January 1 in Abra de Ilog, Mindoro Occidental, amid relentless aerial bombing and strafing by the AFP, following an armed encounter. Another youth, 24-year old Chantal Anicoche, was taken into custody by the fascist soldiers, and illegally detained for a week, before being surfaced amid public outcry. Three Mangyan children were reportedly killed in the aerial bombing which was carried out in the proximity of mountain communities.
https://philippinerevolution.nu/statements/corruption-injustice-abuses-drive-filipino-youth-to-revolution/

The Imperialist Attack on Venezuela, the Crisis of Chavismo, and the Prospect of a Continental Anti-imperialist Struggle
We denounce those who celebrated Trump’s attack, seeing it as a liberation. Regrettably, many Venezuelan migrants believe Trump will liberate us. That is why we are on the front line of the anti-imperialist struggle against the neocolonial offensive, and we call for mobilization to confront and defeat it. What Trump and U.S. imperialism are doing in our country is the first step toward doing the same in the rest of Latin America. We join forces with all those who want to confront this imperialist offensive, and we do so from a perspective independent of the government. Many wonder why the government seems to be giving up now, why it is immobilized in the face of this imperialist attack, and why, ultimately, there was no resistance from the government either before or during the attack. Many comrades are asking these questions, including both critics and supporters of Chavismo. Here, I want to engage all these sectors and forge an independent anti-imperialist position for those mobilizing in response to this urgent need. Saturday, January 3, marked more than just a new episode of imperialist aggression by the United States against Venezuela.
https://www.leftvoice.org/the-imperialist-attack-on-venezuela-the-crisis-of-chavismo-and-the-prospect-of-a-continental-anti-imperialist-struggle/

Leon Trotsky : Democracy and Fascism pt. 1
The XIth Plenum of the E.C.C.I. came to the decision that it was imperative to put an end to those erroneous views which originate in “the liberal interpretation of the contradictions between Fascism and bourgeois democracy and the outright Fascist forms” … The gist of this Stalinist philosophy is quite plain: from the Marxist denial of the absolute contradiction it deduces the general negation of the contradiction, even of the relative contradiction. This, error is typical of vulgar radicalism. For if there be no contradiction whatsoever between democracy and Fascism, – even in the sphere of the form of the rule of the bourgeoisie, – then these two regimes obviously enough must be equivalent. Whence the conclusion social democracy = Fascism. For some reason, however, social democracy is dubbed social Fascism. And the meaning of the term “social” in this connection has been left unexplained to this very moment. [1] Nevertheless, the nature of things does not change in accordance with the decisions of the E.C.C.I. plenums. A contradiction does exist between democracy and Fascism. It is not at all “absolute”, or, putting it in the language of Marxism, it doesn’t at all denote the rule of two irreconcilable classes. But it does denote different systems of the domination of one and the same class. These two systems: the one, parliamentary-democratic; the other, Fascist, derive their support from different combinations of the oppressed and exploited classes; and they unavoidably come to a sharp clash with each other. The social democracy, which is today the chief representative of the parliamentary-bourgeois regime, derives its support from the workers. Fascism is supported by the petty bourgeoisie. The social democracy without the mass organizations of the workers can have no influence. Fascism cannot intrench itself in power without annihilating the workers’ organizations. The parliament is the main arena of the social democracy. The system of Fascism is based upon the destruction of parliamentarism. For the monopolistic bourgeoisie, the parliamentary and Fascist regimes represent only different vehicles of dominion; it has recourse to one or the other, depending upon the historical conditions. But for both the social democracy and Fascism, the choice of one or the other vehicle has an independent significance, more than that, for them it is a question of political life or death.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/01/whatnext2.htm