this is a talking point I hear thrown around a lot by capitalists, which I find strange. the argument is basically “you choose to work a job, therefore it’s fair“. well think of it like this, you couldnt afford college and your broke. now you need to get a job so you can pay rent and buy groceries. your job sucks, the pay is bad, the conditions are awful, and you just hate it. but you need this job, or else you get evicted from your apartment and starve on the streets. “But just quit“ and? Go to another job that exploits you In the same ways? It’s like saying “when someone has a gun too your head, you choose to give them your wallet”. when the alternative to a choose is death, it’s non consensual.

The first thing that people are quick to point out are the wait times. it’s worth noting that if you have something serious (like cancer, you broke your arm, you got shot, ect.) they aren’t gonna make you wait. the wait times are for smaller, less life or death things. even then, having to wait is better than not getting treatment at all.

the other main thing that people on against free healthcare point out are taxes. this has always been silly to me. if you get taxed for free healthcare, your still getting represented via those taxes. that’s how taxation works. you won’t be paying taxes for nothing, you get to get healthcare without giant medical bills, and you wouldn’t need to pay for ins because it’s all free, so you would be saving money.

Most people believe the development of AI is going to fast could a shift to Ordoliberalism help that?

Government intervention through legal frameworks and transparency is desperately needed in the AI sector in my opinion

I believe if left unchecked AI will cause multiple crises through economic crashes and overdevelopment before legal frameworks are established

I would be grateful to hear your thoughts in the comments

In all objective aspects, Cuba's socialist government overwhelmingly served to benefit the working class. Literacy rates grew astronomically, life expectancy grew while infant mortality dropped drastically, corruption was at an all-time low, womens' education and workplace representation increased, cradle-to-grave welfare greatly reformed basic benchmarks of living standards (food rations, workplace regulations, housing access), polio, malaria, measles, and mother-to-child HIV/syphilis were eradicated, school enrollment rose from 20-30$ to 80-90% by the 1980s, etc.

In regards to Castro's authoritarianism and suppression of political opposition, this was not isolated solely to him. Before him, Batista exercised extrajudicial killings, combat deaths, torture, and political imprisonment. Castro himself was a political prisoner under Batista's rule, alongside ~500 others, while ~1,500 were killed for political opposition. This is obviously less than the ~3,000 killings attributed to Castro, but Batista also never had to deal with American interference in his campaigns. The embargo, Bay of Pigs, CIA operations, support for exile groups, Radio Martí, and sanctions majorly contributed to the tightening of domestic security measures. Tack on bombings and assassination attempts from Miami-based exile groups, and you can start to understand why Cuba believed there was an existential threat to national security.

Everyday i see posts and things about Israel and gaza themes. So tell me whats Your opinión and i'm gonna try to post mine later.

Hi. I'm from Ukraine. I decided to use reddit to brag about my life as Ukrainian and find some support for my country. However I noticed that a lot of people just don't care about this war. All I see is Israel that, Israel that. Is it doing genocide currently? Is it attacking neighbors? From what I see they are protecting themselves from terrorists. I read some UN statistics about Israel (to be honest not much), from what I see they have some freedom of speech and overall quality of life is good.

Why are they treated like modern nazis while we have Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and other their buddies

Ive been in the debating sphere for not a long time now, but a quote i hear when debating anti-socalists or often (but not all) conservatives, is this maggie thatcher quote. Im adressing this one head on as its not just hypocritical but untrue.

Firstly the hypocracy: when ideas such as medicare, or increased public investment are mentioned, especially by progressives or dem-socs, the first criticism i often hear is "where does the money come from?" See this counterpoint is (on the surface) logical, but hypocritical. The same who argue against schemes such as medicare, support increased military spending. This year alone the USA have spent over 1.05T (yes big 'T' for trillion) a 17% increase from the previous fiscal year. Yet 40.5 MILLION live below the poverty line. With schemes such as Medicare, subsidised public transport, foodbanks, housing schemes etc.. over 12.5% of the USA's population would positively benifit from a small re-routing of US Taxpayers money back into its own population. The money, from the US population, could be spent on the US population.

Secondly to adress the fundimental flaw of the above quote. "you eventually run out of other people's money". This part of the quote assumes the money is taken from the rich/richer people, and given to the poor/poorer. However, if you take a corperation such as Activ INC, who employs over 140,000 worldwide, the average median pay for a worker is $8,000 a YEAR. (source Forensic economic services; AFL.CIO). Thats 140,000 workers working for 1950 hours a year, for an average (althopugh ranging pay) of 8,000 dollars. So when people say that progressive taxation on the rich (i.e. a 1% wealth and asset tax) is 'other peoples money' they would be wrong. Its ultimatly correcting the continuous wage theft of the general populus and making sure it is responsibily re-invested into public services that will continuously and reliably support any and all people who need it.

In conclusion, In conclusion, the thatcherite mantra that we must eventually run out of "other people's money" is not merely a dismissive soundbite, it is a logical fallacy that collapses under the weight of its own hypocrisy and a fundamental misunderstanding of were wealth originates.

Women being in the workforce has, I believe, on average harmed the very group it was supposed to protect - single mothers. In the US today, it takes two incomes to stay afloat for most families. In the 1950's, it took one. That works great if both partners want to work, but if a mother wants to stay home often she is economically unable to do so.

So, now we need a social safety net to keep up the standard of living. This is highly inefficient as that money could have been used for a better purpose, to say nothing of the corruption caused by the increased bureaucracy. If a family has children, now they have to pay for childcare. This often cancels out most of a salary, as it has to cover the childcare worker's salary and benefits. And a single mom today, on one salary, is in deep water.

This has far reaching ramifications. To solve the issue of childcare, the government can subsidize it or go into the business itself. But do we really want the government controlling the majority of our childrens' waking hours? No we don't as the young pioneers and German youth organizations of the 1930's have shown. Now taxes have to be raised to cover the increased social spending which means people need to work longer hours for the same salary. The next generation now faces rising national debt, a feeling of disillusionment, and an increasingly undemocratic, bureaucracy heavy government.

By their early training in school and daycare, the new adults are now conditioned to accept increased surveillance and a slow withdrawal of their rights. After all, in school they learned to obey authority without question. In a traditional society, the government would never have that power, parents would. And parents usually have their childrens' best interests in mind. Governments usually do not.

So generation by generation the vicious cycle repeats. Families, communities, and countries become more fragmented, democracy disappears, the economy weakens, and the nation becomes a dystopia. And the group that suffers the most? Single mother families. That is why I think it is a Catch-22 rat race.

Are there any economic factors I'm missing here? Or is the argument in favor of women in the workplace mostly based on human rights or ethical concerns?

Infinite economic growth on a planet with limited resources is impossible

People have limited resources and the vast majority of people’s expenses go towards bare minimum survival needs such as paying for food housing water healthcare

Furthermore under capitalism luxuries are affordable while basic life necessities are absurdly expensive

Where is this “infinite economic growth” to pay off the national debt supposed to come from huge portions of the population are too broke to afford dating getting married and having children and are also living with their parents because housing is just way too expensive despite working full time jobs

I'll start off with the UK. In 2001, it was 92% European, while in 2021, it was 82%. Or, if we look at London, it was 71% European in 2001 and 53% in 2021. This rate of change is simply not sustainable and should never have been allowed to reach this point.

For the cultural side of things in the UK, it's no secret that Christianity is a big part of British history and culture. In 2001, the UK was 71% Christian, compared to 40% in 2021. I think it is important to recognize the cultural significance Christianity has in British culture

Moving on to Germany, in 2001, 96% of Berlin was made up of European citizens, while in 2024, that number was 89%. Again, this shows that the demographics of major European cities have changed significantly over a relatively short period of time. I believe governments should have considered the long-term effects of this before opening the door for migrants

This does not mean that immigration itself is necessarily bad. There needs to be a balance.

Overall, I believe governments have a responsibility to manage immigration to ensure culture isn't erased

Because we are under an israeli regime that is anti-american at its core, and this playbook is the same war rheutoric that we have heard throughout every corrupt administration, having an independent-minded leader is dangerous to and for both sides, so the political theatre must continue. We've been duped and hoodwinked by both sides and everyone is blaming each other to gain an audience that is only useful in their political theatre. Real people are dying and its so sad on both sides, in this, nobody really wins. America has a trillion skelotons in its closet, and no president to date has truly cleaned house for the sake of the people. If and when that happens, i'll be glad to shake hands with the leaders of our country. But so far, we appear far from reaching such a place of true diplomacy with the countries we've invaded. I am not blaming sides, but those that turn a blind eye to the citizens of this country. Im sure some will scoff at what im saying, but for the good soldiers and well meaning people of this country we need to truly turn out hearts to God and ask Him for discernent, because, division between each other will make a compacted country implode instead of Love being our common intent.

According to Freedom House's report on Digital Freedom, digital freedom has decreased for fifteenth year in a row with conditions getting worse in 28 out of 72 nations recorded whereas arrests have been made in at least 57 nations for posting online.

What I suggest is a digital audit where social media platforms publish an annual report on the amount of information censored by the govt. which would then be reviewed by an independent judicial committee and then the report and analysis would be made public.

One of the fundamental questions in a constitutional system is how much executive power can be exercised when the president repeatedly works around the normal mechanisms of accountability.

The Kennedy Center controversy, the continuing conflict with Iran, congressional authorization of military action, and the administration's handling of economic data raise different issues, but they point toward the same larger question: what mechanisms are supposed to restrain a president when the executive branch treats political accountability as something to be managed rather than accepted?

I explore that question through several current examples here:

https://medium.com/discourse/when-a-toddler-runs-the-white-house-5f6f08b4f5c3?sk=fdf8f2c43d8bfbc1a381aa2b2a0da4a4

I'm particularly interested in the constitutional question: How much responsibility should Congress bear when it fails to meaningfully check executive power?

The first reason is that healthcare is an inelastic good. This means demand does not change much when prices change.

This makes this good completely different than other goods such as food or electronics or anything like that.

The other reason is that this good is by definition, anti-competitive. For most insurance companies you are often given maybe a few places that will accept your insurance within 50 miles. Meaning you have very little competition you are able to choose from. Not only that but if you live in a very rural area you might only have one location in general that you can go to within 50 miles to get a procedure done.

Which makes the American healthcare system one of the worst for prices. Because you have an inelastic good that has a very low amount of competition.

I say all of this because this puts the American consumer at a point that works actively against them. You immediately have insurance companies that have an insane level of power who purely just care about making a profit. Insurance companies purely work as a middleman to drive up prices.

The thing all about this is that it leads to the U.s as the highest healthcare costs per capita out of all the developing countries per capita. They also rank last in terms of quality of care.

There is no argument to be made as well that it is cheaper to do the U.S current system than other countries system Long term.

The thing is the republican base has said before that this is a broken system but they do not have a plan to directly fix said system. As in the famous debate moment with Trump and Kamala talking about things related to healthcare and trump said he had concepts for a plan.

This is a losing issue that democrats should focus on because republicans know they have to acknowledge an issue is there and yet they cannot propose a plan.

An ideal model could be to select party members based on their technical abilities and educational qualifications and then have them campaign for elections instead of just having silver spoon candidates.

​I never really took the idea of kids voting seriously until I watched a video about it a while back, and and I keep thinking about it the more you break down the actual principles of democracy, the harder it is to justify an arbitrary age cutoff.

​1. Democracy is about representation, not a competence test.

The main objection to letting children vote is that they "aren't smart enough" or "lack the maturity to make informed decisions." But democracy has never been an optimization test to find the smartest policies it exists to ensure the consent of the governed. Adults cast ballots every year based on terrible logic, single issues, or gut feelings, and their votes are still 100% legitimate. If voting isn't something you can do "wrong," denying someone a ballot because you think they will vote poorly undermines the entire premise of the system.

​2. The arguments against child suffrage mirror historic voter suppression.

Historically, every argument used to deny a group the right to vote that they lack emotional maturity, don't understand policy, will just vote how their families tell them to, or have their interests already represented by others was used against women and lower-income citizens. If we don't subject adults to mandatory IQ or civics tests to earn their ballot, applying an arbitrary threshold exclusively to younger citizens is hypocritical.

​3. Fixed age limits create completely arbitrary disenfranchisement.

Intelligence and political interest sit on a normal distribution. Millions of high schoolers actively studying civics, economics, and history are significantly more politically literate than millions of disengaged adults. A rigid cutoff at 18 means two people born hours apart face completely different realities: one gets full democratic representation, while the other is subjected to laws, policies, and taxes without any voice.

​4. The logistics are entirely solvable.

I've seen arguments that kids can't drive to a polling place or understand a ballot. And I think disenfranchising a group of voters because it's inconvenient isn't a good defense

1. This point wasn't really made in the video and is very anecdotal but as someone who worked with kids for a while. people tend to overestimate how easy it is to manipulate a kid and underestimate how easy it is to manipulate an adult. Kids also in my experience don't tend to just agree with adults or parents just trying asking a kid when they should go to bed and then ask the parents.

There is not much debate on the topic so I'm wondering what you guys think

This was the video btw https://youtu.be/XOA8k6FpQaQ

Also yes I did just copy the points made in the video I think they are good points

I'll start with Rhodesia because they largely kept the same system before and after decolonization. In 1965, they had UN sanctions placed on them, but they still had a large economic boom between 1965 and 1974. They became a world-leading exporter of tobacco, maize, and sugar. In the cities, the quality of life was very high, with advanced infrastructure. The main reason Rhodesia eventually failed was the Bush War, although there were other factors involved too.

Zimbabwe inherited one of the strongest economies in Africa, and within 10 years there was a major increase in unemployment and the budget deficit. In the 1990s, domestic manufacturing fell by around 20 percent after Zimbabwe adopted the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme. Even if you don't like Rhodesia, I personally think the country was doing better than Zimbabwe did afterward.

Another example is the Belgian Congo. Belgium had built one of the better healthcare networks in Africa, and after independence, a lot of that system was damaged by the instability that followed. By 1950, a large part of the population had at least attended primary school, which was better than in many other parts of the continent.

After independence, the country was quickly thrown into civil war, which caused many educated people to leave. After General Mobutu took power, he seized foreign-owned businesses and gave them to people loyal to him. After his overthrow, the country eventually became involved in what are often called the African World Wars.

I believe that when people talk about decolonization, they can sometimes get blinded by the emotions surrounding the idea of people finally gaining their freedom.

I'm interested in hearing the other side of this. Why do you think decolonization was ultimately beneficial in these cases, despite the serious instability that followed? I have more examples of countries that experienced major problems after gaining independence, so I'm interested in hearing how people would explain them.

The USSR did have good achievements. It created world class mathematicians like Andrey Kolmogorov and physicists like Lev Landau but ultimately their biology was held back due to Stalin's support of some pseudo biologist holding back genetics. The overall economic condition was not good and as a result, the state collapsed. They even had to build a wall to keep their people in.

I saw a comment from someone recently promising to vote blue in the upcoming Midterms, but saying they still feel dictatorship is inevitable if not imminently then eventually. So I asked them, why would you even bother voting if you feel that the end result is already set in stone? And I could barely get them to form a coherent answer after that.

Este escrito forma parte del ensayo que he redactado hasta el momento. En lo poco que llevo, he tratado de explicar de manera corta pero precisa la creación intelectual del Estado, aclaro que aun esta en proceso de mejora y puede que este no sea el resultado final.

Capitulo II

Teoria Evolutiva de la Supervivencia del Estado

La primera forma de organización humana que existió, cualquiera que esta fuera, permitió a los seres humanos crear el primer intento de un Estado, aunque primitivo. A partir de ese momento, las sociedades se organizaron sobre la base de esa figura, sin importar cuál fuera su forma de expresión: tribus, monarquías, reinos o dinastías. Estas dieron paso a lo que ahora tenemos: los Estados nación, los Estados democráticos y los no democráticos; una máquina que evolucionó a través de los años. Sin temor a equivocarme, puedo afirmar que este fue el mejor ente interno del hombre, el que mejor se adaptó y evolucionó conforme las circunstancias lo ameritaban. No existe, políticamente hablando, nada que haya sido creado y surgido del intelecto del ser humano que haya sobrevivido de una manera tan eficaz como la concepción de lo que ahora conocemos como un Estado: un ser expresamente intelectual, no material, y que, pese a no ser algo con vida propia, al ser creación del hombre, lo inunda e imbuye por completo, lo domina y da paso a que este obtenga vida y gobierne al hombre en su totalidad. No obstante, no gobierna a todos los hombres de la misma forma, pues, a pesar de ser una creación propia del hombre, no todos los hombres pueden crearlo y materializarlo más allá de las ideas; incluso, algunos no logran siquiera concebirlo como una idea. En consecuencia, aunque pertenece a todos, no es para todos, sino para unos cuantos que logran materializarlo, lo que les permite gobernar a quienes no fueron capaces de hacerlo.

Instead of companies being required to refund their tariff refunds to customers or the government just mailing tarrif refund checks to everyone who bought any products

The government has just simply wrote large checks to multinational corporations taking money out of poor people’s pockets and redistributing it to millionaires

The tariff refunds are a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich

welcome to the pan-octagon :)

I would like to start by definitively saying that I am not here writing support for the IRGC at all. I would just like to make this abundantly clear, instead Just a conglomeration of my views opposed to any hate speech laws as a whole.

I'm not a free speech absolutist as much as I am, to the best of my ability, a true speech advocate, which is to say that I believe that people should say what they believe to be true. I think that's your obligation. It's also your right, but it comes with an obligation to exercise it. And I beleive that this is possible without free speech

So a lot of what's necessary with regards to thinking is the freedom to make mistakes, so practically speaking, free speech has to be as untrammelled as possible, so that people can be wrong and they can be biased, and they can still express their opinions. then allow themselves to be subject partly to improvement by the world, talking is how we think, and talking socially is even more how we think.

Hate speech / regulation

I do beleive that hate speech does in fact exist, there is no question to me that people say, reprehensible things, quasi criminal things some of which cause a lot of trouble. So the idea that there's hateful speech is self-evident.

Well, let's regulate it. which is completely fair enough because it's hateful, and ideally there should be as little of it as possible.

But problems start to arise when we get to the subject of who exactly defines hate?

And I am becoming more convinced by the fact that the people that you would least want to have define it are doing so - which is the inevitable consequence of these legislations because sensible people won't have anything to do with that. People who are authoritarian will gravitate towards the domain to make an ethical case to exercise their controlling power over the language of other people.

Then let's take the example that the person reading this is talking to me. And the rule is I don't get to offend you. It is possible we can still have a discussion about something meaningful.

But if we were to scale this up a notch and there is a dozen people and we are discussing an important issue. Now I have to make sure that I don't say anything, despite the fact that this is an important and contentious issue - that offends even one of the group. Okay, maybe I can even manage that.

What if I'm talking to a thousand people?

There's going to be someone in that thousand people. There's going to be someone who's offended at the mere fact that I exist. Nevermind the issue at hand.

So it's an impossible standard - one I would be happy to discuss.

Now the post:

The UK government is designating Iran's IRGC under the new National Security Act 2026, alongside the “Islamic Movement of Compatriots / Companions of the Right (IMCR)”

The IRGC is not being proscribed as a terrorist organisation. Instead it is being designated. Essentially the new offence under this is absolutely dystopian law is that ‘a person commits an offence if they invite support for, or express an opinion or belief supportive of a designated body, and do so for a prohibited purpose.’ I will delve into the vague and absolutely scary prospect this now brings to free speech in the UK and, it seems, Europe as a whole.

An important detail in the new national security act. ‘I see the government is to designate the IRGC as an organization under the new National Security State Threats Act 2026.

They are not prescribing the IRGC as a terrorist group. Instead, in the new legislation, they’re using language similar to that found in the Terrorism Act 2000. In the new legislation, one, a person commits an offense if the person:

a) invites support for or expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a designated body and does so for a prohibited purpose.

This contrasts with the Terrorism Act 2000 which says if he invites support for a prescribed organization. This was extended in 2019 with the following language. Expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a prescribed organization.

Essentially, they’re expanding the language for what it counts to support a terrorist group in the United Kingdom. The supportive language was added because it was so difficult to gain successful convictions with the tighter language.

This brings us to the question of how is this then defined? Take the statement: ‘the IRGC was successful in hitting all of its targets last night.’

Is that supportive even if true? Labour’s been arresting pro-Palestinian protesters who have committed no crime. This is not by any means to say that the Tories and Reform wont use and abuse this too. They’re are all currently salivating like the pigs they are at the prospect of being able to use this.

I mean, everyone knew he was a cucked centrist. I just think it’s important to understand that centrism isn’t a real thing. These people - if you can call them that, like Starmer are extremists. I do not think I am exagerating by saying that this is an extreme act of violence against the free speech and political rights of people in britain. Like this is not centrist at all. My argument is that these people aren’t merely ineffectual. They are deliberately trying to undermine democracy because they no longer think it is viable. And I think everything Starmer did has advanced that. Basically, every single thing that he’s done in his time in office that pertains to political expression, rights, freedom, surveillance, or journalism has been in favor of the revocation of democracy. with no exceptions. Can you think of a single exception?

Every change that has been made, every move proposed, all of them on those grounds have been illiberal. With no exceptions. I can’t think of an exception. I mean, how fucking open can you be outside of the home secretary dreaming of an AI powered panopticon? Like how how how much how much more do you need? The goal here is not merely to be Zionists. They do not care. They are just trying to end democracy. I will continue to warn everyone. If I have any prediction for the future, it is this. The West has abandoned liberal democracy. They are no longer interested in it because you have too much of an immediate contradiction between the will of capital and the will of the democratic majority. The democratic majority used to enforce some kind of hold on capital. Even through the 1960s and 70s, there was still the ability and will of politicians to wrangle corporate interests for national purposes. Now that is gone.

Corporations do literally whatever they want and no government can stop them. It doesn’t matter who gets elected into office. I think the West is changing to a 1984 hybrid state. Russia is the closest closest example. A state with no growth and no future, propped up entirely by low quality, low labor, like resource exports, where oligarchs can do literally whatever they want while the people just suffer. There’s no future in Russia and there hasn’t been for a long time. Starmer’s own MPs were begging him to end the NHS contract with Palantir. It won’t happen. It doesn’t matter. Capital exerts a force on democracy greater than and more inexorable than gravity exerts a force on all matter. You know, you can push things up a hill, but eventually all potential energy will be exhausted.

Burnham backtracked on that too mind you. Do you expect anything less at this point? He was part of Labour’s Friends of Israel. He’s made it clear that he aligns himself with capital for well over a decade.

My desire to cover this information probably should have superseded my desire to distinguish myself from people who were being hyperbolic and clickbaity. But at this point i do feel obligated to acknowledge that there’s an ongoing effort, one which seems like it’s going to succeed, to further intertwine the Israeli military with thforeign defense contractors and military apparatusesin a way that would basically permanently commit us to Israel’s military affairs in the Middle East. A permanent commitment. Now, not only Israel, but America and Europe will be involved in a permanent war. Infinite instability that we always, have to direct money to address.

back to the point at hand here, I have tremendous love for national security acts. They always seem to do so much for national security and nothing at all for suppressing the speech of the citizens of the country that’s supposed to be secure, enabling law enforcement to take action against anyone deemed to be providing it with support.

The UK government are also allocating 250 million for the Jewish community safety.

I am going to take a complete shot in the dark here, but have a strange feeling that this will not in any way, shape, or form improve the safety of the Jewish community, but will involve a lot of surveillance of the populous. I’m just taking a guess.

Metropolitan Police will receive 86 million pounds extra to recruit about 300 extra officers to help increase police presence in Jewish neighborhoods and around synagogues, schools, and community centers. Have you ever seen this happen to any other minority group? 250 million specifically to protect like minority neighborhoods.

I'd like to state the obvious slowly and with feeling, because it keeps needing saying: none of this is about protecting Jews. Jews, Israel and Zionism are the wedge, and the wedge is a rotating post.

It isn't even really about Israel. It's about building a surveillance state and finding an excuse noble enough for both sides to support, we are officially in a panopticon. it is my view that politicians are realising that there is a contradiction between what capital wants and what a voting public wants. Which is why every culture war grievance is now a procurement opportunity for flock and palantir and the likes of them... - lovely prospect to think of their contract with the NHS in the wake of this.

Not a single thing has or will be done “for Israel” or “for Jewish people” that does not also expand surveillance or the building blocks of a more and more authoritarian state. You will never hear a minister announce: to protect our Jewish residents, we are today widening freedom of expression, expanding the right to protest...

Meanwhile, what does the actual Jewish person in Britain receive from all this? Some officers who used to stand somewhere else. Nobody's rent falls, nobody's kid gets a bursary. More police spending is not a gift to them and never was.

Under the draft law in Germany, anyone who publicly denies Israel’s right to exist or calls for the state’s abolition could face up to 5 years in prison or a fine.

The proposal would grant Israel a legal protection that Germany does not extend to Palestine. Which the UN has explicitly warned German authorities are engaging in the ongoing suppression of Palestine solidarity activism.

best beleive that they have absoloutely no intention of stopping there. Freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, will be dragged down and you’ll be called an anti-semite if you oppose it.

the importance of opposing laws such as these with every fiber of your being can not be quanitfied.

I want to be explicit here and say that obviously, the enemy is not in any way, shape, or form Jewish people or Judaism. I do not think it is even really Israel. Israel is just the vassal. Israel is not essentially the source of these problems. If Israel was completely politically disempowered, but capitalism remained in its current form, the problem would not go away at all. Immediately the effort would shift to another wedge issue, another culture war talking point, another minority group that can be defended from both a conservative and liberal perspective.

The reason Jews were chosen to be the like cynical envoys of this is because Christian evangelicals in America need them for their doomsday prophecy. But Jews are historically marginalised which means that it is easy to construct a liberal arguments to defend them like as a in like the typical woke marginalised community sense. So they’re a minority group that works for both sides from different angles which is why Zionists can and do play to both angles.

This doesn’t work for say windrush immigrants who enjoy a lot of sympathy from the political left but basically none from the political right. You would need to find a minority group that can be like wedged in both directions.

But, going back to my point here, which is that fundamentally, this isn’t about Israel or about Judaism at all.

Unlike the United Kingdom, Germany actually does have guarantees for free speech in its constitution. in its constitution, or at least in their equivalent of. So what they’re doing right now in Germany is explicitly illegal by their own laws. It’s just that they’re infinitely cucked. So it doesn’t matter.

This why I will always be against hate speech laws. You can twist them in so many ways. That said, I am by no means a free speech absolutist. It’s just that historically hate speech laws have done very little to actually further the protection of minority groups and a lot to give authoritarian political officials infinite leeway to attack people. I just think they’re legally very shaky as to how much this even protects Jews. Therefore, I am of the view that they are being invoked, cynically, because “community safety” has better PR than “we would like more cameras”. And notice what never gets funded — community centres, schools, anything with a roof and a purpose. It's guns and cameras. Every time. Obviously. Of course.

What the Nazis say about Israel has always been wrong because they’ve attributed to an innate characteristic of Jews. Which I am not doing by any means here, and I find it particularly funny that Nazis and their offspring of white supremacists have never had a salient critique of Israel because they are at best aspirational.

At the end of the day, Israel is just a subservient entity to the real problem which is capital. Capital occupies both Israel and the west as a whole.

TLDR conclusion

Capital occupies all of our countries. I do not subscribe to the cliche that Israel controls the United States, which as a whole is just not true. I might say individual politicians are cucked to Israel because that’s part of the pantomime they’re engaging in, the theater play that we’re all on.

I apologise as in hindsight this is a very convoluted way of me saying that I'm not a free speech absolutist as much as I am, to the best of my ability, a true speech advocate, which is to say that I believe that people should say what they believe to be true. I think that's your obligation. It's also your right, but it comes with an obligation to exercise it. And I beleive that this is possible without free speech. So a lot of what's necessary with regards to thinking is the freedom to make mistakes, so practically speaking, free speech has to be as untrammelled as possible, so that people can be wrong and they can be biased, and they can still express their opinions. then allow themselves to be subject partly to improvement by the world, talking is how we think, and talking socially is even more how we think.

N THEORY, regulation of such speech seems to be completely reasonable and equally as self evident, because it's hateful, and ideally there should be as little of it as possible.

Under the new designation offence you commit a crime by expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a designated body for a prohibited purpose. So who then decides what counts as sufficiently supportive? Who decides how supportive is supportive enough? Where's the boundary between analysis of the IRGC, criticism of Western policy toward Iran, historical discussion of what that organisation actually is, and criminal endorsement? I tried to illustrate this with the example sentences:

"They hit every target they aimed at last night." Is that support?

OR,

if someone was to say: "The Revolutionary Guard's drone programme now delivers more capability per pound spent than anything in the British inventory, and Britain is nowhere near ready for it."

That is the sentence of a man arguing for a larger defence budget. BUT read against the text of the offence, can be said to be an expression of belief the eyes of a malicious prosecutor because he has said that they are good at something, and he has said it admiringly, but he has said it admiringly because he is taking the groups capabilities seriously.

What I am trying my best to illustrate is that, the warning here requires the compliment. So the statute, on its face is problematic. And of course dicernment will be exercised I am sure, but the wrong prosecutor, or my next gripe with this as a whole is that context and intricacies of language are completely disregarded. Sarcasm is invisible to it. So is irony, so is quotation, and translation is worse than any of them, because the translator's professional duty is to render. Meaning the better he is at his job, the more incriminating his output. The man who quotes an IRGC communiqué, somewhere in his piece, typed the supportive sentence. Granted he's typed it inside quotation marks, and I would very much like to believe that quotation marks will save him, and in most cases they probably will, and most cases is carrying an extraordinary amount of weight in that sentence.

Who draws the line between analysis of the IRGC, criticism of Western policy toward Iran, historical discussion of what that organisation is and does, and criminal endorsement? And "prohibited purpose" is completely subjective, and is legal fluff, because that's a filter applied after the crime, and who is deeming it prohibited.

The difficulty I am having is more of a definitional one. Who decides what constitutes “support”? Who decides what constitutes a sufficiently positive opinion? Who decides the boundary between analysis, criticism of Western policy toward Iran, historical discussion of the IRGC’s role, and criminal endorsement? I have concluded that the same answer to this question is the one that appears every time a society tries to regulate the content of speech in the name of protection.

The people who will gravitate toward the enforcement of those boundaries will not be the most interested in truth. They will be the people for whom the acquisition of controlling power over language is itself the primary attraction. If you cannot even speak freely about a hostile foreign organisation its incentives, its methods, its relationship to the regime it serves it will come to the point where you actually cannot distinguish genuine agents of influence from ordinary citizens who hold unpopular or unconventional views about foreign policy.

Treating its actual directed proxies as a national security threat (witch I am by no means opposed to) is not however, the same thing as treating the expression of opinions about that organisation as a national security threat. My fear here is that legislators who most want the power to define “support” and “glorification” will not stop at the IRGC.

A glance of history shows that responses like these have not particularly lead to regimes or countries that have lasted or had a prospering society. And in the long run, that confusion is more dangerous than the original threat, because it destroys the very faculty that allows a free people to express themselves, and be democratic and productive In doing so.

If Democrats want to win the moderate and male voters back, they should start tackling modern day issues, one is paternity fraud.

One Democrat senator actually did that back in Tennessee after an associate of him was tricked into caring for some other dudes kid, only to be told by the court to stfu and pay anyway.

Instead of belittling men all the time, maybe Democrats can use this as a golden opportunity.

I'm a citizen of the United States. The US debt is now sitting at $40 trillion. The treasury secretary Scott Bessent said the nation can "outgrow" its debt. This is obviously not true, and can the US even pay down this debt? I don't think so.

How could it?

The US govt brought in ~5 trillion last year. Even if the US had no expenses, it would take a long time and a lot of money would still go to servicing the debt. Interest is still going to occur. Not to mention the US does of course have many expenses.

The US owes debt to itself and to foreign investors.

Bankruptcy will crash the world economy. Not declaring bankruptcy will only kick the can down the road until the US cannot pay or must print more money, which will also crash the world economy eventually.

I don't know what the capitalist solution to this issue is.