A recent article published by The Grayzone reports on Stephen Curry’s business ties and financial investments in technology companies connected to former Israeli military intelligence personnel. This news came as a surprise to many, especially since Curry has a reputation for being outspoken on social justice issues.

Endorsement deals with major companies like Chase, Rakuten, Fanatics, JPMorgan Chase, Callaway Golf, CarMax, Panini, Google, Subway, Brita, and Simplicity apparently have not been enough for him. Investment in Zafran Security, a tech startup led by former Israel Defense Forces operatives, has also been added to the portfolio, further expanding Curry’s range of business ventures.

What is more surprising is not that an NBA superstar can be politically inconsistent or even hypocritical, but that many people still have not come to terms with a deeper reality: the same forces that shape the rest of society are also found beneath the glamour and spectacle of professional sports.

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The $132 Billion Machine

The NBA generated a record $11.3 billion in revenue during the 2023-24 season, continuing its strong post-pandemic recovery. At the same time, the 30 teams in the league are worth about $132.8 billion altogether, showing how massive and valuable the league has become globally. Every aspect of the league—from the games themselves to the players and the branding—is organized to maximize revenue.

The sponsorship world around the NBA is massive, featuring:

• More than 1,700 brands.

• Over 2,600 deals including team partnerships and player endorsements.

• A heavy presence on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X.

Much of the recent growth is coming from industries like technology, healthcare, and cars, which are spending more to be part of the league.

The Golden State Warriors, in particular, blend sports with Silicon Valley-style thinking. Under owner Joe Lacob, the team is run more like a startup than a traditional sports franchise, focusing on data-driven decision-making and a corporate culture that mirrors a tech company.

The Fan as Idealist

Deep down, most fans understand that professional sports are driven by profit, yet they still hold on to the belief that the game is about teams competing and athletes striving to win. A sports fan is an idealist at heart. In Sacramento, tens of thousands of fans show their loyalty to the Kings, insisting every October that “this is our year,” despite evidence to the contrary.

Unlike the routine grind of everyday life, professional sports are filled with redemption arcs and miracles. As Ljubodrag Simonović writes:

“A sports fan is ‘lifted out of everyday dullness by an athlete in whose dribbling and drive toward the goal he recognizes his own life path... What an adventure for a person who exists like a tiny grain, mercilessly tossed by the winds of history, who, by identifying with the unattainable, seeks to reach his own social worth...’”

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The Path to the Dark Side

Professional athletes may start out like the fans who follow them, driven by a love of the game. Early in their careers, they are much like a young Jedi guided by values such as service and balance. But as success grows, so do the pressures of fame and the fear of loss. That’s when “Emperor Palpatine-like” figures step in, whispering, “Why just play the game when you can own it?”

Just like Anakin Skywalker, who sought more control and certainty, Stephen Curry likely sees good reasons behind each new corporate deal: security for his family and his future. However, the shift from Anakin to Vader happens slowly. Eventually, one might find themselves presenting as a voice for social justice while simultaneously investing in entities connected to systems of apartheid.

In professional sports, the capitalist system reduces everything to profit. Even though athletes drive the machine, they are pushed into serving a fixed goal where they can be replaced at any moment by media companies or corporate sponsors. Under these conditions, athletes are reduced to tools for profit.

If this is simply how profit-driven sports work, why act shocked when a superstar follows that logic to its harshest conclusions?

Works Cited

• Ljubodrag Simonović. Profesionalizam i/li socijalizam. Mladost, Beograd, 1985.

• SponsorUnited. “NBA Marketing Partnerships Report 2024-25.”

• Sports Value. “NBA Teams Surpassed US$ 11.3 Billion in Revenue in 2024; Total Valuation Reached US$ 132.8 Billion.”

• The Grayzone. “NBA star Stephen Curry’s ties to Israeli intelligence exposed.”

• The New York Times (The Athletic). “Warriors in the Arena Where Silicon Valley Merges With Steph Curry and Co.”

All of Marx's written material was literally financed by direct exploitation of workers in Engels’ Salford factory. During Marx's life, Engels gave Marx around the equivalent of $3 million dollars. This is just an inflation adjusted number—if we drill down into the PPP (purchasing power parity) aspect it was more like $6 million easily.

Engels inherited around $6-7 million, again adding PPP and other factors he was definitely the equivalent of a contemporaneous HNWI (high net worth individual - meaning a person with $1 million in fluid assets alone).

Engels had around $15-$20 million by the 1880's - that was his value adjusted for purchasing power. Without his patronage, Marx's theory would not have existed. Marx would have been likely a beat writer always a step away from the poor house.

Without Marx's distance from and isolation to proletarian labor, he would never have had the time to sit in the round reading room at the British library for 10 hours a day. He would never have had the mental dimension of separation from proletarian consciousness necessary to objectively analyze it.

Neither did Marx have to worry about administering production from the factory floor—this was Engels cross to bear. For nearly a decade Engels used his family stipend (salary basically) to give to Marx- around $200,000 a year.

Chinese Marxist Leninists, in the oddest way, do the same thing on a societal level—they isolate themselves within the party cadre from the national bourgeois class—they use their ability to seek out markets and competition and integrative ability in the global economy (dollar system). Then they take this "salary" and feed it back into a centralized industrial planning model. They exist both outside the system and right on top of it's command structure.

Engels is most likely the most important functional part of Marxism, his class betrayal is what gave us the civilizational movement of Marxism Leninism.

Just as Christians "win" by imitating Christ, the CPC "wins" by imitating the Engelsian process.

Originally published on x.com.

On April 8, 2026 an employee at a Kimberly-Clarke warehouse in Ontario, CA started a Facebook Live, (allegedly) remarked that, “all you had to do was pay us enough to live,” struck a windproof lighter and set the inventory ablaze. One hundred seventy responders from 11 jurisdictions extinguished the blaze.

The underlying crime (arson) we can reasonably assume that, like most crime, was based on a need, perceived or real. Our alleged perpetrator discerned the absence or removal of a necessity and acted in a way to alter or eliminate the situation.

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The phrase quoted above is repeated time and again in the article that we’ve gathered to analyze, this I believe is a deliberate choice. We are given a contrast in the article. The irrational, grievance based folly of Mr Chamel Abdulkarim is counterbalanced by the voice of reason. Co-worker Alejandro Montero is in the article to help our author make a little sense of what happened.

“I just met him that night. He was helping me load my trailer,” Montero said. “I was working together with him right there for two hours before break and then right at break... I went to my car, and that’s when it happened.”

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We have in this news story two of the clearest examples of Proletarian individuals reacting to material conditions. The tale sounds almost like a thought experiment for its perfection of detail. Mr Abdulkarim is the example of a worker with no Revolutionary direction toward a wider future. The exact person that the American Communist Party desperately must reach and redirect. If he is guilty of the arson at his workplace, Mr Abdulkarim engaged in an individual act intended to bring about wider material change. What Liberals would brand simple terrorism, Communists recognize as useless adventurism. I would love to suppose that had the proper recruitment effort met with him, that he would be today, unfettered and even more effective an agitator. I cannot accurately suppose that because of our other archetype…

The disgustingly lumpenproletariat Montero rushes to the defense of the wounded $32b corporation. His mystified lack of understanding is typified with his insistence that he is personally well paid, presented for either added context or to counterbalance the violent grievance. There is always a contingent within the workforce that has attained a level of comfort from which any change, let alone violent change, represents only negative. They have erroneously identified with the very system creating lethal friction in the people present with him in his same cohort. The contradiction between upholding the system and the system being designed to harm you becomes entirely fantastical if the victim can be convinced that he is in fact in conspiracy with the oppressor and that is what we hear in Montero’s complaint that they are now out of work because of Mr Abdulkarim’s actions. Let us not waste time trying to remind Montero that there is no scenario in which a company worth $32b is unable to help its workers, displaced by the actions of a lone malefactor.

Walz, other MN officials served subpoenas amid protests, ICE raids

USA Today reports that the federal Department of Justice served Minnesota state officials, including the governor, with subpoenas. The nature of the subpoenas remain unclear, though the article notes tensions related to federal immigration enforcement. Federal officials assume supremacy while state officials disagree with their methods.

Analysis: For freedom loving Americans who have ever paid lip service to the notion that our dexterity as a people come from the ability of states to (within reason) govern themselves as their environment and populace dictate, we take notice of these overreaches, however minor. This is not the worst thing that has happened in this administration, but it is indicative of how far the bar for acceptability has fallen. If America had ever been great in a way that allowed for American style freedom, such impropriety within the government would have been rooted out preventing wider rot. Such as the example of Nixon’s petty, crime-city style fiefdom; being a racist piece of shit notwithstanding.

A non-distinct judicial subpoena from the feds to the state should be cause for alarm. Why have we allowed it to be just another Tuesday?

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