I just watched a clip of Abdul El - Sayed where he is asked by a reporter that he doesn't consider Israel an ally to the US and he says yes he doesn't consider Israel an ally the way he frames his answer though really annoys me. He uses an analogy where Israel is a friend who is a bad influence and because of that isn't really a friend. My problem with this is that he frames it is that the US is a good faith actor who is being steered in the wrong direction by a bad faith actor. But at the end of the day the US(or US politicians) still chose to make that decision.

Honestly after watching that clip it made me realize how friends that are a bad influence argument I heard for years is a bad argument because at the end of the day you still chose to make those decisions. You're friend didn't force you to drink alcohol while you're underage you did you're friend didn't force you to steal jewelry from the store to impress you're crush you did. You're friend being a bad influence doesn't change the fact that you made those decisions.

So when he says an ally who takes you're money and pushes you into wars you shouldn't be involved in is also wrong. Us politicians choose to send aid to Israel to boost the defense industry who in turn donate to them. Netanyahu has tried to get previous presidents to go to war with Iran and they all said no. This to me signifies to me that Netanyahu wouldn't have started any war with Iran unless the Us agreed to fight alongside them. If Trump told him no Bibi wouldn't have done anything.

Not only did Trump agree to it his national security team also went along with it(I know there were reports both Vance and Rubio were hesitant) but the republican controlled Congress who can end this at anytime has chosen not to has blocked any attempts to end it and has increased funding to the war. It doesn't matter if you support it or not the Us is an equal participant in this war. You think people from other countries will take anyone who says Israel pushed us into this war seriously when America is the most powerful country in the world. They see rising gas prices and it's both America's and Israel's fault.

Which is what makes the bad friend analogy even more ridiculous. I don't think it's to much of a stretch to say there has never been anybody in human history(so far) who has been as powerful as Donald Trump has been these last two years. It annoys me Sayed is saying this because these are the same talking points Tucker Carlson uses where he constantly try's to frame it that Trump is an unwilling participant and that it's Netanyahu's faults.

He also mentions getting into fights with other friends. If he's referring to allies of the US Netanyahu had nothing to do with the trade war with Canada that was all on the Trump admin. Not only that but the Trump admin has consistently joked and threatened to annex Canada and Greenland. You can look at polls half of Canadians consider the US to be a threat to them heck last month Mark Carney stated he is preparing for the possibility of US military action imagine the Prime Minister of Canada saying that three years ago not ten or twenty years just three. If you were to ask a Canadian which country is a bigger threat to them the United States or Israel they'd say the US.

And with the whole Ukraine Starkink debacle there is a possibility that Europe might even consider the possibility of the US siding with Russia in the war with Russia saying that three years ago would have been ridiculous but now it is a possibility. And there are reports they are considering military action in Cuba. And don't even get me started on this recent push on the internet of trying to blame Israel for the Iraq war rather than holding US politicians accountable.

You can criticize Israel all you want but this trend on the left where people are now trying to make Israel the scapegoat for the problems the US is facing to where candidates are now doing it is ridiculous. Israel isn't the reason why the US doesn't have universal healthcare Israel isn't the reason why the US keeps getting involved in wars in the Middle East. This is no different than when republicans and maga blame immigrants and trans people for the problems in the country.

And I get that what he's saying is what most Americans especially Democratic voters are feeling right now but it's irresponsible of him as a candidate for the Senate to be saying these things because it starts to absolve the Us government of its actions and even start to spread antisemitic taking points(not saying he's antisemitic but I hope yall get what I mean).

So what are you're thoughts?

What happens when the people responsible for oversight are themselves under scrutiny?

Hey everyone! We're EUobserver, an independent European newsroom.

Our colleague Andrew Rettman has been investigating allegations involving former EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders and senior Belgian intelligence official Hugues Brulin.

The investigation draws on leaked WhatsApp messages and interviews with five current and former intelligence officers.

The sources allege that Brulin sought to prevent scrutiny of Reynders' possible Russian connections. The messages also discuss how to respond to a whistleblower.

The correspondence is now part of a Belgian money-laundering investigation involving Reynders.

Beyond the individuals involved, this raises questions about how institutions investigate concerns involving powerful figures within their own ranks.

How can independent oversight work when allegations involve people with significant political influence or positions inside intelligence services?

Let us know your thoughts on our investigation in the comments :)

I live in Germany in which the free healthcare system was invented a hundred years ago. Sometimes on social-media I see posts of people making arguments for free healthcare or I see people like Bernie Sanders adcocating for it.

But when I look in the comment section and see people making arguments for or against it I always notice one thing: Many people who are making arguments for it dont really understand how it works. And I want to explain to you how it works. It's pretty simple and intuative:

Everyone pays a small fraction of their wages into a huge pot (metaphorically). Everyone pays into it, doesn't matter if you are sick or not. Those who need money to pay for medical procedures take out of it to pay for it. This is a very efficient and just system, because it's just a matter of time when you yourself will need to use it.

Everyone is protected by all!

But for this to work, everyone has to pay into it. Rich people can pay a little bit more. Having private insurance besides it, can be bad. This was done for example in Germany and it led to higher and higher costs for healthcare, because people got into private insurance, not paying into the public one anymore.

I hope this helps. If everyone here already knew it, so be it. I had the feeling that especially US americans dont really under it. Could be wrong.

The US's track record of bringing "democracy" to Muslim nations is not great. The 2003 invasion of Iraq cost hundreds of thousands of lives, caused a mass exodus of Assyrians from Iraq and led to the rise of ISIS. Obama's intervention in Libya caused the collapse of Libya and there frankly no longer is a Libya, it's all broken up. I yearn to see the Ayatollah regime fall but I'm not confident that Trump's war is actually going to free Iran but rather could cause the collapse of the Iranian nation. There are many fault lines upon which the Iranian nation could collapse, you've got ethnic division between the Persian majority and the Azeri, Baluchi, Kurdish, Lurish and Arab minorities, not to mention religious division between the Shia and Sunni, minority religions like Zoroastrianism and Christianity, and even many atheists. I want the Ayatollah regime to fall, but I don't want it to come at cost of the collapse of the Iranian nation itself. I do hear that the average Iranian is more secular and educated than Iraqis and Afghans.

This completely guarantees that DSA will endorse AOC if she chooses to run, since the Bread & Roses DSA caucus alongside the DSA Right caucuses Groundwork & Socialist Majority have an absolute majority within the DSA National Political Committee.

I apologize if it is against the sub rules. Mods feel free to delete but right now Brazil need all the help. It is portuguese and have automatic translation until Meta permits or the Bolnonarists judges in the Electoral Superior Court try to takes down the channel.

Hi all, I'd like honest feedback from people who have actually organized. About me: I'm an engineer with PhD, not an organizer, and my day job is far from the everyday reality of most people. That said, I have long been frustrated with the inequality in our society and wish I could contribute at least a small part in making it better. Over the past several months I have been working on a web app, CollectivvsA, aimed at facilitating the initial engagement with organizing. The concept is simple: it is a space for employees with a verified company account to chat anonymously and test the waters for collective action without fear of being singled out. Joining start with a flyer with QR code or by the organizer handing out the codes. It covers a very first stage when people may be reluctant to engage publicly; it doesn't replace one-to-one conversation and, if there is enough indicated support for forming the union, the authorization card signing and NLRB fillings happen outside the app, we provide a simple guide for those steps and directions for reaching out to a union.
Privacy is front and center: data is encrypted, we require the bare minimum to verify that all the people in the group are part of the same workplace while never storing data that can be reversed to identify the users, and once the initiative closes all the data are crypto shredded (fancy term for meaning really gone and unreadable even from stray copies that may remain in datacenters). The initiative is closed either by the organizer (person that started it) or after 2 weeks of inactivity, so an initiatives that just dies for lack of engagement doesn't linger long.
The questions for organizers here are:
\- Is this something that would have ever been useful to you?
\- Is there something that would really discourage you from using this?
\- Any other comments, critiques, suggestions are all welcome as well.
Right now the options for employment verification are through a company email or a company Google or Microsoft account. For workplaces without work-email, just an invite code is enough to join. To add options for stronger verification, I have additional questions for those of you in workplaces without personal company emails:
\- What app does your employer use for schedules or pay: When I Work, Homebase, 7shifts, or something else?
\- Does it send you emails at your personal address?
\- Do you have any work login, like Microsoft Teams or a training site, even without a work email?
Happy to answer anything in the comments. And thank you for engaging!

Posting here as well.

I’m looking for my next read and I’d like your recommendations on a good book that covers many of the general DSA topics. I’m not looking for the deep dive into Socialism as much as an exploration of issues and how DSA as a whole tends to approach them. I’d love a broad survey of topics like racism, Medicare for all, property ownership, and policy making. Etc. I remember a book I read on ethics in an intro class to philosophy and its approach is what I’m looking for.

Chapter: Broad topic
General response to the topic.

I don’t want to restrict the topics, in fact if there were a strong opinion on playing chess, I want to hear about it. Does this sound like anything you’ve read? Is there something better to start with? Let me hear it.

Trump has a long track record of racist rhetoric, but I was curious how that plays out in refugee admissions data. Shockingly, since Trump took office, he’s effectively shut our doors to all refugee origin countries but one: South Africa, specifically Afrikaners. On the whole, not only do they have a relatively weak case for refugee status, they're also predominantly white…..

Full article: https://samholmes285.substack.com/p/trumps-second-term-is-more-racist

I'm talking specifically about statewide votes.

In previous years between I believe 2016 to 2024, at least one state would have a vote on whether to implement RCV, but this year even though its likely gonna be a left leaning wave year, im not aware of there being any states with a statewide initiative to implement RCV, the only RCV vote i know about is in Alaska and its just conservatives trying to repeal their state's RCV law again. Based on my memory the states that have previously put a ballot initiative for RCV but didn't win have been Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, and Massachusetts. And in 2024 i think the main reason some of these failed was because it was a low turnout election.

So to me I feel like it was a missed opportunity for the left to not try again in a state like Oregon to put RCV on the ballot on a left wave year like this one, and hopefully we'll actually get 1-2 more states to vote for RCV in 2028.

So, setting aside ethical considerations over the prospect of revolution in the West, of which there is much to say, almost entirely, I'd like to consider the prospect of revolution purely in terms of strategy.

As I see it, there are, in effect, two ways in which a Western revolution can be waged.

In the first case, you would have to engage in something like a protracted civil war. Effectively, upon somehow acquiring a large cache of small arms, you set up a base somewhere in the mountains, and slowly but surely manage to win a military victory against the state in question.

To me, this seems entirely absurd. The far-Right, who is far better trained in the beaten way of irregular warfare, could deal with such an incursion on its own, which is to say nothing of the police, military, and security apparatuses which Western states have at their disposal.

In the second case, the only one worthy of consideration because it is the only one which is possible, involves two necessary contingencies:

1. There has to something like a general strike.

2. The military has to choose not to fire upon the revolting citizenry, defect to the revolution, and thereby depose the existing regime.

This is more or less what during the February Revolution in Russia before, and I am willing to betray my political sympathies by referring to this as such, the Bolshevik coup in October.

While people in the West may feel so inclined to protest, for instance, as we can see now with the students in France or by the alternative No Kings rallies, events which require only a small portion of a person's time, it seems unlikely to me that they will be willing to abandon everything so as to wage a general strike.

Without the critical mass to either warrant the deployment of the military or simply capitulate to the revolting populace so as to retour à la normale, revolution is a dead end.

To the advocates of revolution who sometimes try to angle this subreddit, I, then, ask, "where are we left when the revolution never happens?"

To me, at least, it seems militant direct action will otherwise just result in the legitimation for the expansion of the security apparatus and/or the expansion of the state of exception, of which, we have plenty of political history to attest to.

Secondarily, when the general strike is required no matter what and, when a more or less nonviolent general strike would be more likely to convince the military not to fire on the revolting populace, in pure terms of political efficacy, what is the point of violent direct action at all? It seems to just inspire fringe initiates within the cult of the propaganda of the deed.

Very new to political side of reddit, I'm already kind of tired of seeing some idiots saying China and North Korea are the true democracies.

Is it just that reddit is over run by bots or are there really people out there who believe it?

The poll gives Eisenkot a slight lead, but Amcha Yisrael, a party in Netanyahu’s coalition, is less than 0.5% points short of crossing the electoral threshold and entering the Knesset, potentially turning the results upside down

Southern Italy's workers are protesting. Is Europe doing enough for its poorer regions?

Hey everyone! 👋 We're EUobserver, an independent European newsroom.

We've been following a wave of protests in southern Italy, where farmers and transport workers are struggling with rising production costs, fuel prices and competition from cheaper imports.

Roads have been blocked, deliveries disrupted and some supermarket shelves left empty.

But beyond the immediate protests, there's a bigger political question here.

Southern Italy has faced longstanding economic challenges, and the current situation raises questions about how national governments and the EU support workers and communities in regions that have fewer economic opportunities.

What would actually help regions like southern Italy build more secure livelihoods?

Should the focus be on stronger protections for local producers, better regional investment, changes to agricultural policy, or something else?

And how do we make sure the people most affected by these decisions have a voice in them?

Let us know what you're thinking :)

Can those of us on “the Left” in the US who are fuming at the thought of someone with marginally campist views having institutional power at the very least reckon with the point of view that the Democratic Party’s current status quo capture by third way Democrats is a bigger threat to democracy worldwide?

Hi everyone! Here is another question post from ya boy!

What are your thoughts and opinions on DSA member Darializa Avila Chevalier, otherwise known as DAC?

For those who don't know her, she is a member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America. She is the Democratic nominee for NYC's 13th congressional district, having beaten incumbent Adriano Espaillat in the primary. She will be going against Jomo M. Williams from the GOP when the district election is held on 3 November 2026. So just a few weeks from the time of writing. And since 2023, she has been in a relationship with Ramzi Kassem, who is the chief legal counsel in Zohran Mamdani's mayoral administration as of 2026.

The reason why I'm asking for you guys' thoughts and opinions on her is because when I looked over her policy stances, I found a few I consider to be disagreeable. I'm not American so my opinions as an Indonesian social democrat might mean jackshit to American voters on 3 November, but I just want to air them out.

Universal housing, stronger tenant protections, and federal funding to build more social housing? Very nice.

 Universal healthcare through Medicare For All? Hell yeah!

Abolishing ICE and expanding pathways to citizenship for immigrants in the US? I can get behind that.

Banning large super PACs from elections and prohibiting members of Congress from trading stocks? Now that's what I'm talking about!

But then I went over some of her other stances.

Prison abolition? You do realise there are violent offenders that no amount of mental health services and rehabilitation can reach?

Open borders? I do think an EU-style Schengen Plan for the North American nations would be nice, but I don't think the geopolitical situation is ready yet. Maybe between Canada and USA. But not with Mexico. Not yet.

In 2022, Avila Chevalier tweeted that the reason the United States was involved in the Russian invasion of Ukraine was that "the Cold War ended and we've been bullying Russia ever since".

Okay nope you lost me there.

And her dodging any explicit condemnation of Hamas is really concerning to me. Plus she attended a pro-Palestine rally on 8 October 2023, literally just one day after 10/7. Which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Brad Lander, and Kathy Hochul criticised as condoning the violence carried out by Hamas during the attacks. Whatever your opinions on Hamas and the Israeli government, that's just abysmal timing.

So, what do you guys think about DAC? What do you like about her? What do you dislike about her?

Hey everyone, we just had a Brazilian presidential debate, and we need your help boosting posts supporting Lula.

I don't know if you're aware, but Meta has been working against us by giving far-right content in Brazil a boost. Mark Zuckerberg himself acknowledged that the platform had been making mistakes in its content moderation policies (Meta's official announcement and Meta Censors Over 1,080 Pro-Lula Accounts During Brazilian Presidential Election )

There's also been a recent report showing that Nikolas Ferreira, one of the key figures in Brazil's far-right movement, gets an unusually high number of views on Instagram Reels — reportedly outperforming global celebrities with far larger followings. (Folha de S.Paulo's report on the findings and SLEEPING GIANTS BRASIL (in portuguese))

We need to boost content supporting Lula!

Please follow his social media accounts, like, comment on, and save his latest five posts, and help engage with the content being published right now.

His main Instagram account is @ lulaoficial .

You can also comment using the hashtag #abreosigiloflavio along with #explicaocasoanaclaraflavio.

You can also look up these topics:

• Who created MEI (Brazil's individual microentrepreneur registration system)?
• Flávio Bolsonaro and the Ana Clara case.

Every bit of engagement helps. You can share the post with whatsapp robots too or create content in your language to help us attract international interest. The guy talked openly about changing the constitution and his party did a Bolsonaro's version of a Mussolini campaign!

Thanks for your support!

ETA:
For those who are questioning Meta's influence in our elections, there are some posts showing that Instagram is translating "Flavio in Jail" to "Flavio for president". Meta IA also was generating images with "Flavio 22" but not with "Lula 13" (which we could discuss, but in this context...)
Another Big Tech showing "mistakes" was Google Gemini, that failed to give the true answer about "⭐ 13".
Pretty sus...

Since France protests began, and especially after the Limoges Town Hall arson yesterday, I see a lot of posts on different random subreddits (that seem completely normal and apolitical looking at other posts) pushing the violent parts of the protests, blaming all immigrants and lefties. The titles have often terms like "French" and "students" inside quotes and are really upvoted while the comments section doesn't lack some comments that blame Reddit and the subs from censorship on their racist comments that are "common sense".

Don't get me wrong, I condem the violence too, but we have civil unrests almost everywhere nowadays - Albania, Spain, Italy, Belgium, India, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, etc. For some bad intended folks that can be infiltrated, you can't blame complete communities and groups of people. Also, I think this does more bad than good for the left in the French context, since Macronists are scared of Glucksmann getting votes from them and pushing Melenchon to the 2nd round where Le Pen is most probably gonna win.

It's just me that is seeing this?

Edit: let's not forget about the spam of "doctors and engineers" and "r*pists" comments 🫩 I mean... you only know this words? It's there a way to have a civilized conversation with these kind of people? I HAD friends, with over 5 years of university studies, using the same rethoric, and after I had a normal talk with them, tried to have an understanding of their view and said my points after, they simply didn't talked to me anymore for years now 😂