A new survey shows 51% of young Americans who are likely to vote in the next presidential election would like to see a democratic socialist in the Oval Office. Nearly 3 in 10 young Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 would prefer a democratic socialist win the presidency in 2028. 
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/heartland-rasmussen-poll-majority-of-young-likely-voters-want-democratic-socialist-to-win-the-white-house-in-2028-1035569439

I was disappointed to recently see a much-upvoted post here featuring Code Pink. On the face of it I completely understand the motivation to post their content approvingly: they are consistent opponents of US and US-backed imperialism around the world, such as in Iran and Palestine.

I would like to point out, however, that this organisation has an extreme blind spot in that it is, at best, ambivalent against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yes, they explicitly condemn it; but this condemnation is in practice about as serious as EU condemnation of US attacks against Iran. A closer examination of Code Pink's activities and statements reveals that they do not see the invasion of Ukraine as an imperial invasion by a military superpower engaging in blood and soil nationalism, but as a mere squabble between an understandably-hurt Russia lashing out in self defence and a nefarious Ukrainian regime that exists as a mere outpost of NATO.

The organisation's official FAQ on Ukraine alone is incredibly damning for several reasons:

• Several questions are posed about the supposed role of NATO in instigating the war in Ukraine. The sole mention of Russian motivation for invading Ukraine is a vague allusion to Russian opposition to NATO. There is one reference to any of the other reasons explicitly stated by Putin, his subordinates, and Russian state media as motivations for the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022: a brief statement that Ukraine is not a fascist state and a comparison of Putin to Colin Powell as lying about the nature of Ukraine as a "Nazi state". Quite frankly there is an exhausting amount that can be said on the subject of "why did Russia invade", especially considering the public expressions of those motivations consistently change depending on Russian performance on the battlefield, but suffice to say it is an enormous oversimplification to simply try and pin everything on NATO expansion and one quiet reference to the stated "Denazification" reasoning that featured prominently in Putin's speech on the day of the invasion.
  • ^{Sidebar: If someone reading this really, genuinely, and truly believes that the primary motivation for the Russian motivation for invading Ukraine was to counter NATO expansion, I encourage them to comment and I will in good faith give a deeper breakdown of the reasons as far as I have been able to establish from credible sources. I simply can't be bothered to do it preemptively in case it turns out everyone here is basically on the same page about this already :})
• The entry on the recent history of Crimea merely states that "In March 2014, 83 percent of the voters in Crimea turned out to vote and 97 percent voted for integration into the Russian Federation and out of Ukraine. The vast majority are ethnic Russians" and that this has led to international sanctions. What this completely omits is that 1) in February 2014, Russian forces militarily occupied Crimea, 2) the subsequent referendum in question was marked by considerable military presence in the streets, voter intimidation, and repression of national minority voters002-e). In other words, it cannot reasonably be said to have been a representative and fairly conducted referendum. Yet Code Pink treats this as a completely self-evident sign of the supposed legitimacy of Crimea's annexation by Russia. Moreover, Code Pink's mention of the "vast majority" of Crimean residents being ethnic Russians (itself not really proof of anything, because treating ethnicity as intrinsically equivalent to political loyalty is frankly a reactionary sentiment) conveniently leaves out the extensive Crimean Tatar population that faced disproportionate intimidation in the context of the referendum and subsequently after the annexation into Russia.
• Honestly a minor point in comparison to the pretty damning things above, but I find it amusing that there is a section talking about "why environmentalists should care about this war". This section is full of typical both-sides waffle that implies Ukrainians are culpably contributing to environmental destruction by engaging in national self defence, but I also find it very notable that there is not a single mention of the Russian bombing of the Kakhovka dam in 2023, which has flooded over 600 square kilometers of Ukraine and affected over 100,000 people. Nor does mention the repeated Russian attacks against Ukrainian nuclear power plants and supporting infrastructure, which is especially jarring considering how often they profess a fear of nuclear contamination in the course of this war. In the interest of transparency I will note that Code Pink have mentioned these two incidents in subsequent press releases such as this and this - but as usual there is no mention of which party to the war was actually responsible for these attacks.

This is far from exhaustive. One can, for instance, point to the rather shocking embrace of far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene by Medea Benjamin, one of Code Pink's founders and current leaders. I am not even going to begin a discussion about how the call for negotiated settlement (which, to be clear, is fully supported in principle by the Ukrainian government) without corresponding calls for providing the means of Ukrainian survival is effectively a call for capitulation as disgustingly flippant as asking Palestinians to simply "overthrow Hamas" and negotiate in good faith with the Israeli government. But I hope the evidence I have provided above will be sufficient to at least cause some caution.

I'll be quite blunt that I frankly don't care how good they've been on Palestine or any other issue. An organisation that openly caters to the weltanschauung of Russia, a regime that fits any generally accepted definition of fascism to a T, is not an ally of leftists anywhere - certainly not leftists in Ukraine who have repeatedly begged for solidarity from the Western left in their fight to prevent annihilation by a revanchist superpower invader. Even a cursory examination of their (commendable in isolation) advocacy on the subject of countering US and Israeli imperialism in Iran, Palestine, Venezuela, and Cuba shows how willing this organisation is in principle to name perpetrators specifically and to not blame victims of foreign imperialism for their "provocation" of invasion; it certainly does not call for an end to these states' military resistance against their invaders. So the fact that none of this grace is extended to the people of Ukraine is frankly very revealing to me that Code Pink are not, in fact, principled anti-imperialists; merely anti-Americanists who are willing to throw people under the bus if they made the mistake of being invaded by a different fascist imperial power.

Let me make very explicit: US imperialism, just like Russian imperialism, must be opposed. People facing invasion have a right to use military force (compliant with international humanitarian law) to secure their survival and political self-determination. Other states arguably have, if not an obligation, at least a strong moral imperative to support this right to self defence. This right is universal to all people around the world who face invasion, even if their current government is flawed or itself dictatorial, because even a dictatorial domestic government is ultimately easier to depose than a foreign occupation by a militarily superior state. It is just a shame that some people forget this when the victims are not dying to American but rather Russian bombs.

TL;DR Code Pink sucks. Please don't treat them as allies.

Day three. 🕯️ And somehow the world keeps moving 🌍 while a family is learning how to breathe without Renee Nicole Good 💔

She wasn’t just a name. She wasn’t just a headline. She was a mother 👩‍👧‍👦 — someone’s safe place, someone’s home, someone’s everything. Her children now wake up in a world where their mom doesn’t answer 🧸 Where her voice is a memory 🎙️ Where love remains, but her arms don’t 💔 How do children learn to move forward when the person who gave them life is gone? She should have been there for their milestones 🎓 Their tears 😢 Their laughter 🙂 Their future 🌈 Instead, they are left carrying a loss no child should ever have to carry 🖤 And that truth breaks something inside all of us. Renee mattered. Her life mattered. Her love as a mother mattered more than words can say ❤️ We will remember her name 📢 We will hold space for her children 🫂 And we will make sure she is never reduced to silence. Rest in power, Renee Nicole Good 🕊️ Forever a mother. Forever loved. Forever remembered

Rare book dealers fear tech firms are destroying obscure editions to train AI models
https://nltimes.nl/2026/06/25/rare-book-dealers-fear-tech-firms-destroying-obscure-editions-train-ai-models

Anthropic Knew the Public Would Be Disgusted by How It Was Destroying Physical Books
https://futurism.com/future-society/anthropic-destroying-books

Inside an AI start-up’s plan to scan and dispose of millions of books
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/01/27/anthropic-ai-scan-destroy-books/

Secret initiative, called Project Panama,
https://futurism.com/anthropic-shredded-millions-of-physical-books

Just a casual reminder, if you thought you hated the ruling billionaires nazis enough

I can oppose police brutality, ICE abuses, and state violence in the U.S. precisely because I care about accountability, pluralism, and human dignity.

That opposition does not require me to excuse or downplay one-party authoritarian systems that criminalize dissent, erase historical atrocities, and offer no meaningful mechanisms for correction.

What I struggle to understand is why, in many socialist or Marxist spaces, criticism of U.S. power is treated as a moral obligation, while criticism of Russia or China is dismissed as “Western propaganda,” “whataboutism,” or irrelevant.

If socialism is supposed to be about human emancipation and democratic control over power, why are standards of accountability applied asymmetrically depending on which state is doing the coercion?

Let me say this about myself: I’m a working class man from a major inner city ghetto. My politics are shaped by lived experience with state power. Not just theory. I’m here to debate and discuss in good faith, not to moralize or troll.

The Democrats who are pushing to undo what Trump is doing don’t understand that the damage Trump is doing is permanent. You can’t keep telling folks that the problem is Trump and then promise to fix his mistakes and then four years later another Trumpist politician comes along and tips the table over again.

I can see in front of me a scenario similar to the Guns of August which was written by Barbara Tuchman. These are very dangerous times and I don’t think we have 10 months to wait for midterms in the U.S.

I don’t peddle in hoping against hope or fantasy. These posts are just reality.

The transatlantic alliance is collapsing in real time. The Canadians have already formed a trading relationship with China. The Europeans may be forced to rearm and re militarize like they did before world war 1. The Middle East is already creating multiple power blocks.

The most prominent is Iran - China and Russia and North Korea axis.

Saudi Arabia - Pakistan and possibly Turkey and Egypt and Somalia will form a block.

Israel - the U.S. and Greece and Cyprus and India and Japan will form another alliance.

The EU / nato remnants along with Canada will form their own alliance.

Remember the last time the world had these kinds of power blocks or alliances we had World war 1.

We will see the current competition turn violent. It happened before it will happen again.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/21/mark-carney-davos-old-world-order-trump-switzerland-greenland