zazen

I was rationally going through the options of what the US could be up to - answering your own threads question which I myself was also confused about. Why get triggered because I haven’t mentioned China in the same light when you yourself are referring to Westerners as filthy which I’ve never done lol This is where words can be limiting. The world is more complex than our labels or definitions - and in each definition there are distinctions and contexts that differentiate the thing being described. Things are more on a gradient or spectrum than simply being black and white. Notice how you need to use a future hypothetical example of China acting blatantly imperial yet we could pluck examples upon examples of western imperialism including from just this morning. Yet you’re getting worked up about me not critiquing China enough or to the same degree. You confuse the frequency of my critique with bias when there’s just more Western imperialism to critique. The same thing happens with the labels of authoritarian vs democracy. Most people moralise governance structures into binary buckets then lump countries into them as if they’re equal. China, Russia and North Korea are all lumped together erasing their differences, despite NK being a dystopia. Russia is way less functional and more corrupt than China. China has localized democratic mechanisms while having a meritocratic-technocratic governance structure that’s insulated from the “tyranny of the masses” type democratic outcomes such as voting in clowns like Trump. The consequence of having a popularity contest as your voting system for over a billion people is different in scale to using it to govern under 10 million. Certain things being left to the whims of the people can be dangerous if those people aren’t wise enough to vote. Scale matters. Nordic countries for example are highly functional - yet they’re lumped together with the US in the democracy bucket as if the US is an equal - when instead it’s way more plutocratic. Singapore is in between and sort of a grey area of what it is. Nuance, context and distinctions matter. Me criticising geopolitics (the politics between nations) isn’t me endorsing or claiming those nations as angels and demons. A country can be better internally and worse externally in its relation to other nations - and vice versa. A country can be a hell hole dystopia domestically yet neutral and non threatening externally. So nuance applied to your hypothetical : Firstly, China sits in a different geopolitical category. It’s a rival superpower that has to deal with the current superpower openly trying to contain it with think tank pieces contemplating a naval blockade. To add insult to injury, just as is the case with Russia - Ukraine and Taiwan aren’t alien neutral territories to them but are like family. Weaponising a kin state isn’t the same as doing so in a neutral third country. It’s like turning your cousin against you vs a stranger - turning a cold power game into an emotional one and only upping the stakes. Secondly - Taiwan isn’t a clean imperial test case because like Singapore it’s sits in a sort of a grey zone. China frames it as protecting internal territorial integrity because it see’s Taiwan as part of itself - yet governed separately. There’s ambiguity and a unsettled question around the status of Taiwan which is being weaponised. From wiki: “The One China policy refers to a United States policy of strategic ambiguity regarding Taiwan.[1]In a 1972 joint communiqué with the PRC, the United States "acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China" and "does not challenge that position." Thirdly - it can pose an existential threat because its part of the first island chain along a critical sea route China depends on to feed and energise the country. 80% of oil imports come through there - China isn’t self sufficient the way the US is. Imagine for example if Russia weaponised Corsica against France who depended Mediterranean Sea trade to survive as a nation. When you have a superpower adversary (context mentioned earlier) wanting to contain you via proxy - your posture towards that country and adversary will of course shift. Simply calling this “defending democracy” (just like with Ukraine) flattens the context and sanitizes what is basically a superpower trying to structurally contain you (as spelled out in think tanks and shown in behaviour) + emotional provocation of doing so via a kin proxy. That’s how a cold competition turns hot - with a civilizational spit in the face - hawk tuah. Both countries, including much of the world - know this isn’t about democracy promotion but simply weaponising the notion of democracy for geopolitical aims. I don’t need to provide the countless examples of US dickriding the idea of democracy as something it and the West stands for and wants to promote yet undermining it across the global South and working with dictators when it suits them. When I sound harsh on the West it’s me being harsh about the empire, not the people. The nation state is different from the imperial empire state. Absolute sovereignty is a luxury belief in a world of unequal power. The fact that laws exist to equalise and arbitrate power / survival dynamics doesn’t erase that power dynamics exist. A utopian view hopes for no power dynamics. A unjust view says the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. A pragmatic view understands that balance of power politics is the least bad option in a non-utopian world. That balance was ignored in the fault line of Ukraine and was moralised away till it collided with reality. One can be pro-Ukrainian whilst simultaneously understanding that balance of power must be managed as to not have weaker nations (via proxy) be destroyed when that balance tilts toward great power competition.

@BlueOak This is a good watch: A masterclass in geopolitics / great power competition:

I think it’s mostly empire logic (domination) with capital (profit) as a bonus - what BlueOak mentioned about BRICS basically if we zoom out. They can’t have a nation be outside their system and survive that easily - especially if it’s in their own hemisphere. A defiant nation cracks their legitimacy - Venezuela has survived despite nationalising oil, sanctions and is doing so via a parallel non dollar system. So maybe they want to make an example of Venezuela - to discipline them so other Latin American countries don’t think of trading outside that system in their local currencies etc. China’s the largest trading partner among South American countries. Venezuelan oil is perfect for US refineries that are set up to refine it - only Canada and Russia have that type of heavy crude. But US already gets most from Canada so it’s not like they need Venezuelan oil so bad - maybe as an insurance as a country should never rely on a single source. US oil companies aren’t too enthusiastic about it either due to risk: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/17/trump-oil-venezuela-return-00695292 Venezuela only provides 4% of China energy so cutting off China can’t be the main reason either. Maduro even offered Trump access: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/americas/maduro-venezuela-us-oil.html From Sky news: In October, Mr Trump appeared to confirm reports that Mr Maduro had offered a stake in Venezuela's oil and other mineral wealth to ease mounting pressure from the United States. "He's offered everything," Mr Trump said at the time. "You know why? Because he doesn't want to f*** around with the United States." So if the oils not needed, they can’t blockade China in any meaningful way (only 4%), and Maduro’s open to working with the US then why still be aggressive? Has to be empire logic to protect the US led, Western world order from any defectors and defiant examples showing others that it’s possible to exist outside it. lol Some interesting related vids:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8057j0mz5mo.amp From earlier this year: ”Australia's federal police have said they are investigating whether "overseas actors or individuals" are paying local criminals to carry out antisemitic crimes in the country.” Wild

Haven’t seen it but for you guys:

@Elliott Highly doubt they will go directly at war over Taiwan. Hegseth said in war games they lose to China. But also for China it would be too costly as amphibious invasions are never easy - they’d lose legitimacy in Asia massively too. Same dude above just did a new video on the conflict. Homeboy comes with receipts:

He's very interesting and engaging to listen to because he connects things like a masterful story teller. But I think he overreaches way too much into conspiratorial thinking and ''secret societies''. He assumes a level of coordination and intent I doubt is there, or even can be at the scale he thinks and in the world we live in today with surveillance, the internet etc. People can harm without needing evil intent or ideology simply given the incentives of the system we operate within today - reminds of the book ''banality of evil''. It's more mundane and colder, less about intent and more about indifference due to different actors pursuing their own self-interests at a distance from the consequences. The complexity of the world has abstracted away the costs of our own actions. Modern day power is less a centralized top down pyramid of control and more a diffused network of powerful nodes pursuing overlapping interests. All that happens within a shell of political democracy where the president in the hot seat acts as executor of elite demands and is then scaepgoated for never fulfilling campaign promises. He's right in the sense that elites have negative cohesion ie united by fear of exposure (to their corruption) and mutually assured destruction which leads to needing to keep secrets - why we have scandals, backstabbing and infighting. But them needing to protect themselves and each other doesn't mean their united coherently around a long term plan to intentionally enslave everyone.

@Elliott True what you say. Probably best to work on it from both ends - disarm the moles from the worst weapons and uproot the foundational issues driving these nutters to do what they do. The West can’t bomb people overseas, invite the world in including people from the same regions they fuck over, not care enough about assimilating said people, then act shocked at the backlash. I follow some right wingers on X to plug into their hive mind and it’s the predictable “deport Muslims” and “suicidal empathy” rhetoric coming from the same old big accounts. Conspiracy brainstorm (or rot):

I wonder about the media, Hollywood and fashion industry - are they just pushing the boundary of taboo breaking and attention farming or is there a “agenda” with intentional “social engineering” going on as described here: Is all the above just late stage empire degeneracy (common in times of abundance) or something more? Seems twisted and satanic. We should be at war with whatever “that” is - it’s haram and deserves to be sent 2-3 years Dagestan and forget.

Your claiming the solution is to distinguish Islam from Muslims, but then talk about Islam as a single, fixed “toxic” ideology to which you apply no distinctions. You conflate Islam as a whole with a caricature of it - which actually produces more Islamophobia.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec/11/britain-icc-funding-netanyahu-arrest-warrant Interestingly Francesca Albanese (UN special rapporteur) says she was sanctioned mainly after she started threatening the profits behind the Israel-Gaza conflict - and not simply for criticising Israel.

The Europe of today will be different in 20 years for sure. But depends what their talking about - power, cohesion of Euro nations, or ''ethnic aesthetic'' due to migration and low native birth rate - or all the above which can be tied together. By the end of the century its possible the natives could be a minority at a national level - and most definitely at a urban level in major cities. The catch 22 is low native birth rates needed to be compensated by migration - but migration is now becoming contested - yet is still required because the current math just doesn't math - you can't sustain a inverted demographic pyramid where you have more dependents (retired elderly) than those that provide the tax base for them (youthful workers). The other issue is assimilation vs parallel societies being created. Also, are these migrants or communities distinctly different to the host nation? For Europe much them can be due to majority of the migration from Africa/Middle East. Islam is also a very strong and distinct identity that doesn't dilute so easily - especially if the host country doesn't have a strong counter identity to assimilate them into their own ''norms''in the first place. Some people will assimilate but others won't - its everything in between. But this can eventually end up having a effect on the institutions of that country in the long run, including its core values being challenged. What happens when you eventually have haram police shaming only fans models or Bonnie Blue lol she just got away easy by being banned from Bali: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxe42w2j0lo instead of jailed. Just by the sheer scale and numbers - European or Westerners are a minority on the planet - and it's their region which is melding into a melting pot. The other regions will remain distinctly their own culturally / civilizationally because of lack of alternative cultures or people mixing into them to the same degree. Africa will remain Africa, China Chinese and India Indian. South America - South American - it's already very mixed itself - maybe that's Europe's future - EuroBrazil with Muslim characteristics instead of Brazillian but lifts and bikini culture. It would be a shame to lose a distinctive European culture and identity also - which isn't racist but just as a appreciation for having diversity in a true macro sense of another ''civilization'' to enjoy with its own distinctive culture. Other places are threatened by consumerism and globalized homogeneity but not in the same way. Like we can still go to Japan and sure we'll see Mcdonald's and glass buildings etc but the wider container is still very Japanese. Same with India or even UAE for example. There's still a very strong dominant culture. I think the West diluted away their identity (various reasons) and didn't bend the newcomers coming in to that core identity - not in a uniform way but just as a bare minimum to ''fit in''. Rome absorbed foreigners but glorified Rome. Ottomans integrated diversity but centered around Ottoman primacy. Americans integrated migrants while mythologising what it is to be American. I've noticed when asking American's where they're from they lead with nationality vs ancestry which is what ethnic Europeans or Brits usually lead with or include in defining themselves. They say ''I'm British Indian-Chinese-etc'' while Americans simply say ''I'm American'' then require a follow up asking about their ''background''. Europe seems to have lost it's center.

Seems it no? Just by looking at the incentives. I went to uni with a rich Kazakh guy (international students) - and how it often goes is that Western aligned elite factions from these countries act in ways to gain favour from the Western elites themselves - at the expense of national interests of their home country. Political corruption. This guy for example was telling me how political connections he knew of wanted to oust the current government (in Kazakh) who weren't as aligned to the West but were doing investment deals with China etc. And it's not even about whether they dislike China or not but more that their own connections and affiliations in the West means that they'll personally profit from it. That's how it works in much of the developing countries in Africa etc also. A full on war doesn't even have to break out where that Chinese infrastructure is damaged. It's just enough chaos to signal uncertainty and hit investor confidence to slow things down or derail certain projects. These elites are insulated from the wider economy weakening because the will profit from their patrons instead. Keeping in mind the above - Cambodia's new government that came in 2023 is led by Hun Manet succeeding his father. His son is more Western aligned as he's educated in the West and went to military academy at West point. Doesn't mean fully aligned and torching China relations but definitely playing a balancing act. Also - US Cambodia relations were quiet until Biden visitied in 2022. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/biden-pledges-u-s-will-work-with-southeast-asian-nations-at-summit-in-cambodia Also - https://2021-2025.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ICS_EAP_Cambodia_PUBLIC.pdf ''Mission Cambodia has necessarily adapted its Integrated Country Strategy to address significantly changed conditions, including a new Cambodian government that came to power in August 2023. Mission Cambodia is pursuing an affirmative engagement strategy with the new generation of Cambodia’s leaders, while utilizing all diplomatic, information, military, and economic tools in support of U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives.'' Also from Google AI - ''Ream Naval Base controversy centers on Western (primarily US) fears that Cambodia is granting China exclusive or permanent military access to the base in the Gulf of Thailand, which would expand China's military footprint in Southeast Asia. Cambodia vehemently denies these claims, maintaining the base is sovereign territory and open to all "friendly" navies on a rotational basis.'' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2k42n54kvo#:~:text=Soon the two corvettes were,dock at the new pier. Also - news just in of Thai army reporting "English-speaking foreigners" involved in controlling Ukraine-style FPV drones including fiber-optic controlled drones. https://x.com/BrianJBerletic/status/1999069762513711461 Seems to point one way simply by looking at the timing of events and incentives in place.