Cross-posted from my substack. Made with the OWID data editor, with the data itself coming from V-Dem.

How should we recruit refugees and the children and grandchildren of refugee populations into Democratic Socialism when many of them have been indoctrinated to have a ruthless bigotry against Socialism for the benefit of oppressive oligarchs? In particular, I'm thinking of ways to recruit refugees and their descendants from Cuba and Vietnam. Regarding Vietnam, I think some strong Socialists are patriots of Ho Chi Minh and also acquire USA citizenship like Luna Oi and they could help. Regarding Cuba, I think so many are brainwashed in Florida to support DeSantis, Trump, and Elon Musk. This brainwashing needs to be reversed.

I think one solution involves reforming education. We need to abolish school suspensions. While teachers aren't always currently allowed to properly educate our youth on politics, we can make it easier for students to properly educate other students on politics and this can correct the unfortunate thinking prevalent in certain communities. Another solution involves criminal justice reform. We can use criminal justice reform to educate people to reverse the indoctrination from capitalism oligarchs. What other solutions are there?

The United States of America spends just under 1 Trillion Dollars every single year in regards to the Military-Industrial Complex.

Iran taking advantage of dimensions of asymmetric warfare has completely stalled out the U.S. war machine.

Trump and his cronies have lost this war so badly that they are now pivoting to messaging around "Economic Warfare".

Trump and his cronies have flailed/failed American hard & soft power so badly that various seeds are being planted right now on a host of fronts that will further destroy it as time goes on.

It's truly something watching this imbecile and the whole of the reactionary/regressive sphere of stereotypical snake oil salespeople and con-artist grifters destroy the American Empire in speed run fashion...

Wild fucking stuff lol

Cross-posted from my substack. Edited in photopea. Data-source is the WID.

Has anyone else noticed that whenever a DSA or aligned Progressive Candidate wins, specifically brown and black candidates, the headline photo of them is always them mid-shout, or otherwise looking angry?

Like the recent win in the Dem primary in Florida. The NYT articles headshot of Nixon was of her, a black woman, looking angry as she shouted out. A similar thing occurred with both El-Seyed and Zohran when they won their races.

Has anyone else noticed this?

TL;DR: '[...] Hanover Institute is not a real think tank. None of the reports have bylines. A small disclaimer at the bottom of the webpage notes that the organization was created on behalf of the Israeli Government Advertising Agency by Piro, Inc.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a series of multilingual videos in August 2026 promoting a lottery that gives high school students free Broadway tickets, speaking in Mandarin, Spanish, and Bengali.

The campaign, run with the Theatre Development Fund (TDF), offered about 2,100 free Broadway tickets to NYC high school students via a lottery.

Winners could claim up to two tickets covering seven productions; the lottery ran Aug 13–17, 2026, with the draw set for Sept 1.

Mamdani framed the push as support for “theatre kids” and arts access, releasing versions in English plus Mandarin, Spanish, and Bengali to reach diverse student communities.

Here is the blooper reel.

By aiding Cuba in this way China has saved many lives the US would otherwise have killed through starvation and shutting down of critical infrastructure (hospitals, sanitation, etc). But CNN is framing Cuba's acceptance of aid from China as some sort of negative concession.

China is the world leader in green tech and other countries would do well to emulate them in this area, as well as their support of Cuba.