zazen

@PurpleTree @Twentyfirst The gulf sending money is them buying the assurance of security. Its not so much to gain something as it is to maintain something: national security. They lack muscle but have money, whilst Pakistan and Iran for example lack money but have at least a decent amount of muscle: enough to be a deterrent . This is why Syria was taken under the umbrella of the regional players - with Turkish muscle and Gulf money. This is also how the gulf exerts influence over Israel via current negotiations for normalisation in exchange for a Palestinian state. And have sold this plan to a global elite capital class who only care for the next best returns on capital in the coming decades of low growth in the West. The gulf have no stick (muscle) to hit with but have the carrot (money) to dangle to achieve the vision they want for the region: a peaceful stable economic hub reviving the old Silk Road to become Europe 2.0, with their younger demographics read: consumer market, vast resources, deep culture and history, and enviable geostrategic location on the worlds largest landmass connecting the East and West. Many Muslims are angry for the Muslim world (mainly the gulf with all their money) not doing anything - but they lack the sophistication to see the game of diplomacy being played. If the gulf tried something ballsy they know they’d end up like Iraq. And the other Muslim countries with reasonable muscle (Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt) have too many millions of their own people they need to worry about feeding and developing before they would sacrifice themselves.

@Raze And that cost can only be imposed by those holding up Israel’s security architecture - mainly the US. There’s much anger in the Muslim world for gulf nations not doing enough to counter Israel - but these gulf nations security depends on the US also so they are playing a tricky game. @Apparition of Jack To bring your conclusion full circle perhaps we defeat anti-semitism by seizing actions that stoke it - mainly the distorted implementation of Zionism. Trauma doesn’t morally license oppression of others. Conflating what the state of Israel does with anti-semitism is a categorical error Zionists use to obfuscate their actions. Zionists can’t seek safety of one people (themselves) by displacing another (Palestinians) in the most violent manner. Zionism in its current form demands total dominance to feel safe, but total dominance ensures they never will feel safe as it’s at the expense of others. Israel already has one of the most powerful armies in the region, with nuclear arsenal and the backing of not only the West but the worlds superpower the US, with unconditional yearly aid . If it still feels unsafe, then nothing will ever make it feel safe. If Israel truly wanted a security guarantee it could join NATO to come under its article 5 umbrella, but it wouldn’t do that because that means it would lose some autonomy and be held more accountable which goes against its interests of settling the land of Zion.

I should change my username to comrade Zazen lol I kid @Daniel Balan Don't let bipartisan politics (something with a hint of right wing = automatically bad) get in the way of analysis and understanding how capital flows, which is largely a-political. If we stop getting triggered for a second about the details and some of the guys conclusions (of which I disagree with some also) - the wider point remains in understanding elite behavior - and Leo gets to the essence of it with the fact that they serve their own class. What I think has shifted and to which that guy points to is that the elite class is no longer nationally rooted - so their class interest isn't as aligned with the national interest as it once was more closely. In the past national capitalists depended on national strength/development: a strong domestic economy, educated labor force, domestic consumption, military protection. Elites were usually publicly linked to national myths like nobility, founding fathers, industrial pioneers. Think Rockerfeller, Carnegie etc. But now they are post-national because in a globalized world their wealth, operations, and identities are embedded in a global system of capital. Today's elite have have transcended the nation-state as capital is mobile across jurisdictions where they can benefit from and arbitrage currencies, labor costs, tax jurisdictions, consumers markets that aren't just domestic etc. That means the elite class is no longer bound by the health of the nation they originate from. Their fortunes can rise while the nation declines - which wasn’t quite possible before. Their reputation is more global as their companies answer more to shareholders than citizens. This is why we hear both the left and right critique corporatocracy - but in different ways. There's quite obviously a issue afoot but the solutions being offered are debated. Both sides are somewhat unknowingly pointing to the same meta-crisis which is: a post-national elite class with no accountability to people or place. They're shouting past each other because they come at the issue from different places and with different solutions. A note on the EU in particular: The global eite have built global regulatory frameworks (WTO, WEF, ESG standards) that supersede national sovereignty - in the same way that the EU supersedes the nations within it. This is the problem some EU nations find - they have policies they need to follow which may favor one nation over another - ie they are superseded to the point national interest isn't always taken into account or is subordinate to supranational governance. The Eurozone monetary structure for example favors export driven Germany, but hurts debtor nations needing flexibility such as Greece, Italy, Spain. They could de-value their currencies to become more competitive but can't as they if they don't have monetary sovereignty. France is heavily subsidised for its agriculture while Romania for example isn't to the same extent - this undercuts local production making Romanian agriculture less competitive. Nations are expected to take in refugees as part of a burden sharing scheme - but perhaps one nation doesn't have the capacity to take in or assimilate a certain quota of refugees the same way another richer nation could. On going green: Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, and Bulgaria aren't as rich as Germany, France or Netherlands who can afford the subsidize the green transition more easily. Some states have to shut down coal plants without viable alternatives meanwhile France shapes the rules to fit its existing strengths by pushing the EU to classify nuclear as "green", that helps them secure subsidies and financing. Because France gets a lot of its energy from nuclear, it meets the emission target more easily. The same emission reduction target requires vastly different levels of sacrifice. Just like the transnational elite, the EU technocracy can act above nations, for a supposedly “higher order” good - but at the cost of national agency and interest. It's like a centipede where each nation is a leg with the EU being the body - but each leg moving in its own direction towards what is in its best interest - but the body of the EU forces it in a certain direction causing friction, gridlock and what is known as bureaucracy or a lack of dynamism where the wrong things happen, the right things aren't allowed to happen, or the they take too long to happen.

I agree that they have lower development as a whole. Which is why I think distinctions are required between moral and material development - the horizontal and the vertical. But whats being posited here is that they have low moral development in particular - Raze put it very well that being materially deprived doesn't necessarily mean having less moral capacity. Like you said on the previous page - terrorism is their only option. Why? Because they're left little to no option - but you conflate this to mean they must have low moral development. The point is - Israel is granted the privilege of being violent while still “morally developed” but that nuance is denied to the Palestinians. Even though its the Palestinians who are in a much more dire material situation where their morality is severely tested. Most materially and morally developed people who are then materially oppressed and suppressed, would be pushed to act immorally out of desperation. Which is why I also made the point about the Nazi's being materially developed yet acting morally abhorrent. The point being? Of course they do - it’s their cynically deceptive use of delusion to justify their domination. In reality the other side is objectively weaker which isn’t even debatable: Also, states are held to certain standards that non-state actors or an entirely stateless people aren't. Them acting restrained isn't a direct indication of their moral development - as their systemically embedded to an international frame work as a nation state. They need to at least perform restraint or the appearance of it ie ''warnings sent before we bomb your home, which your a refugee in because we drove you out some decades ago and plan on doing so again''. That's what their doing now. Scooting them over to Rafah which was a previous safe zone but now an area of rubble, so their at the edge of the Sinai desert. This is no sign of moral development just because its done in a way that skirts under the radar of international law or scrutiny - though the world is hip to that game now. Never mind the recent polls by Hareetz showing the moral development at a societal level: ''An overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews support the transfer of Palestinians from Gaza, according to a poll by Pennsylvania State University. The survey, conducted in March and published by Haaretz newspaper on Thursday, found that 82 percent of Israeli Jews support the forced expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, 47 percent of Israeli Jews answered yes to the question: "Do you support the claim that the [Israeli army] in conquering an enemy city, should act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites did when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, ie to kill all its inhabitants?" The reference is to the biblical account of the conquest of Jericho.''

@Twentyfirst @Leo Gura Many Red piller based bros agree with this sentiment. Should we now generalize to call Westerners low on development or are red pillers just another toxic off shoot of Western civilization? Like I said above - When Westerners do or think bad it’s excepionalised to be the exception, when non-Westerners do or think bad it’s generalized as the society being low on moral development.

And terrorists from the Middle East aren’t noisy outliers? Jihadists aren’t outliers out of 2 billion Muslims? When Westerners do bad it’s excepionalised to be the exception, when non-Westerners do bad it’s generalized as the society being low on moral development. If Germany can produce Nazism out of privilege and still be called “developed,” how do we justify calling an oppressed population “morally underdeveloped” when their worst elements arise out of desperation, not dominance? Nazis had less excuses as they weren’t stateless or colonized, and had national sovereignty. They were one of the most industrialized, literate, ethnically unified nation states ie “developed” on the horizontal plane, yet committed the worst of the worst on the vertical plane of moral development. I think generalizing development by conflating the two is the issue. ISIS and al-Qaeda came from desperate conditions of despair and humiliation rooted in foreign occupation, colonization, and the collapse of Muslim sovereignty - which Bin Laden gave voice to. It was a legitimate contextual grievance that mutated into fanatic extremism and was dealt with in illegitimate ways - terrorism. Are we to assume the moral position towards colonization is to sit down and do nothing..which isn’t moral development but moral pacification - a colonisers wet dream of course. Islam in particular isn’t a pacifist oriented religion - it doesn’t have the ethos of turn the other cheek and spread the ass cheeks vibe. Or meditate in a cave like Bhudda whilst the village down the mountain burns because realities non-dual lol Generalizing again with word Palestinians rather than attributing terrorist acts to the particular off shoot group - Hamas. Also, when there’s a massive power asymmetry, the weaker side doesn’t get to choose “moral” or “clean” tactics - they’re left with desperate, asymmetric ones. Imagine having no intelligence to pin point and target the state level perpetrators who have caged you in like fish and shoot you in the bowl from time to time, let alone the means (army, navy, airforce) to even go after them. The heck they supposed to do? And the world’s superpower determines if they have a life of dignity or not by vetoing their right to self determination. The world tells these people via internationally enshrined law that THEY are the ones who have the right to self determination in this situation - but when they resist those in the way of denying them that right, by asymmetric and desperate measures, their told their less morally developed. Maybe I should occupy your house so I can observe your moral development. Speaking of homes - I have been taken in like literal family by Middle Easterners to an extent I’ve never experienced in the West. Some of the most loving warm people on the planet.

@Daniel Balan If it’s so easily dismissed as shit then you should just as easily wipe the floor clean with it and bring some counter arguments. How else should we explain why the elite don’t seem to do what’s in favour of their respective nations? Perhaps it’s because they don’t simply have loyalty to them - including trans-national entities such as corporations. Its also not as simple as what right wing conspiracists think - that’s it’s a cabal conspiring in the dark. It’s simply a coordination and a confluence of multiple actors and private capital going to where the next best return is on their capital. Beyond incentives perhaps it’s also ideological / utopian thinking.

There’s a distinction to be made between contextual violence and fanatical violence. Contextual violence is localized, geopolitical, reality based = resistance Fanatical violence is usually globalised, political in an absolutist sense, ideological based = terrorism Hamas and Hezbollah get lumped in with the fanatical kind like ISIS and Al Qaeda when they are localized reactions to geopolitical injustices. They use terrorist tactics but aren’t really defined by terrorism in their totality. This is why Iran and co are called the “axis of resistance” - because they are resisting something. ISIS and Al-Qaeda start off by resisting something (Western occupation - intervention) but mutate to domination. Irans support isn’t fanatical but contextual - although fanatical tactics are deployed. The actual sponsor of terrorism was a US backed ally who exported a radical version of Islam - Saudi Arabia, which they are now trying to counter. Those resistance groups have a certain limit to them based in reality - their geopolitical locality. Actual terrorist groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda are limitless in their aspirations - they go for ideological purity and domination, not just geopolitical justice and liberation. The thing is that the fanatical usually also comes from the contextual. When resistance to (contextual or colonial) occupation and suppression is crushed - that resistance mutates into fanatical terrorism due to desperation and resentment. The reason that violence then goes global is because those crushing their resistance are global - in the Middle East’s case that would be the West and the US. The fight is taken to where they are at - but in a fanatical and violent manner. It becomes globalized when that localized resistance is crushed by those not local to it. Western foreign policy created the foreign policy of terrorism as its consequence and backlash. This can be geopolitically traced. A domestic struggle (jihad) becomes a foreign one, because foreigners are involved. Local geopolitical struggles who would otherwise remain domestic and contextual become global and fanatical. The remaining local struggles conveniently get gaslit and lumped in with the global fanatical ones.

Answers in the first 7 - 10 minutes of this video: OCGFC = owners and controllers of global financialized capital ie global elite

Remember 40 beheaded babies? They want the world raging enough to justify the destruction of Gaza, meanwhile we see actual evidence of daily atrocities like charred bodies of kids like in this video: https://x.com/dropsitenews/status/1925970429665063206?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ

https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2025-05-22/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/00000196-f3a3-d6d3-ab9e-f3bbf6070000 Genocidal polling results from Hareetz that show it’s not just a minority of the population that are radical - IF the poll is of good quality. I only assume so as Hareetz is reputable? “82% of Jews in Israel support the expulsion of Gaza residents”

Of course the West has also done good things, great things in fact. Credit where due - but accountability also where due. It’s natural to focus on the Wests crimes because they’re ongoing and global in their effects, and many of us are from the West. It’s possible to build hospitals and bomb them at the same time. Never mind causing the instability and blood shed that makes people need to attend them. Never mind that sanctions cripple healthcare systems and supplies - collectively punishing 150 million people (Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria). Collective punishment seems to be something Israel and the US enjoy, just like India threatening water flow to 250million people in Pakistan - no wonder the three are aligned. The West didn’t “invent” or come up with human rights - they simply codified them after the most horrific display of violence was committed in 2 world wars which started in the West, but which had global effects making them “worldly”. Western civilization at the height of its rationality, science, and Enlightenment ideals produced mechanized death, racial extermination, and global exploitation. Naturally then, when it wrote the UDHR it focused on preventing atrocity - “freedom from” horrors it had just inflicted. The drafts for the declaration of human rights were made alongside China India and Lebanon who rounded things out to not be so individualistic. Rather than solely having negative centric freedoms from oppression (survival based), they introduced positive freedoms to live with dignity (thriving based) - which were actually resisted by the Western delegates. It’s the civilizations that had long histories of moral philosophy, spiritual depth, and ethics of communal and social harmony that brought the aspirational rights to education, social safety nets, culture, rest and leisure - which the Western delegates resisted because “socialism” or “state obligation” ie capital being held accountable to benefit the many over the few. Those rights have been erased in blood as fast as they were inked on paper, and continue to do so - from Vietnam to Gaza. Being charitable and helping isn’t some value the West “brought online” - that’s how Wilber frames values in Spiral Dynamics. As if African tribes haven’t had their own systems of communal sharing or the following never existed: Hindu Dharma, Confucian benevolence, or Islamic the zakat / waqf system from 1’400 years ago. Historical amnesia caused by Western exceptionalism. Pakistan’s Edhi Foundation operates the largest free ambulance service funded ground up by donations - as someone shared on another thread just yesterday. The Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital is also there for free cancer treatment - which is admirable in a relatively poorer nation. Meanwhile most Americans are drowning in medical debt. The largest NGO is BRAC from Bangladesh, which now serves over 100 million people in Asia and Africa. The most generous country voted for 7 consecutive years is Indonesia. What’s notable about those three examples is that they’re not wealthy nations but developing, and are majority Muslim - which counters the narrative of “Islamic” cultures not being able to offer anything positive or do any good. Though, fundamentalist Islam is definitely an issue. The bottom line is that the West nor anyone else has a monopoly on goodness - but the West in particular have monopolised the narrative around it. If it isn’t due to Western exceptionalism then it’s simply ignorance of the wider world, in particular with Americans being more isolated from it.

@PurpleTree @Twentyfirst Every nation has its history and has done bad, genocides included. The difference is that the West continue to back and have full complicity in one today - its not history, but the current story. The unique thing about the West is its consistency in behaving badly, where other nations behave so occasionally and contextually for various geopolitical or national security reasons (wars etc). The current US admin are trying to mainline that there’s a genocide of white farmers in South Africa but can’t see the very obvious one going on in Gaza. This is why the world is angry at the West and why the West is being constantly critiqued - they got way more to be critiqued about. The largest imperial offenders just moved the baton from the British Empire over to the US. The common rebuttal is that the West just have the technological means and power to ravage entire regions - and that any other ''civilization'' or peoples with equivalent power would do the same. Its a hypothetical, but even that hypothetical doesn’t hold up because today there is a comparable power which is China - and they aren't carpet bombing and regime changing nations. People still assume China is a rising power vs a risen power on par with the West. So they will further say China just isn't strong enough. But the evidence of their risen status and power will become increasingly evident with one deep seek moment after another, and across domains. Westerners will struggle to accommodate this new reality into their ''spiral dynamic'' frameworks which assumes that the West is more ''developed'' but that reality will continually counter. The abuse of power is typical, but the West's abuse is unique in some ways. They pose as being post-ideological whilst very much being ideological: liberal individualism, secularism, capitalism, and Western exceptionalism - all packaged as neutral “universal values.” And their expansion came with a cultural and racial dimension. For example whilst Islam also expanded, they kept local cultures intact and within a broader Islamic civilization - which is why you had Muslim Africans, Arabs, Persian, Turks and Asians. They also didn't have a racial supremacist bent to it whilst the West uniquely baked racial hierarchy into their imperial ideology.

It’s “low” terrorism when it wears sandals but “higher” when it wears a suit and tie. It’s low when a non state actor does it but high when a state does it - still bad, but not as low, whatever that means. It’s like saying when an establishment candidate wins its democracy, but when a non-establishment candidate wins its populism. Even though democracy is functionally a popularity contest - the most popular is voted into office. Saying Israel does “some degree” of terrorism is like saying apartheid South Africa did “some degree of racism.” It’s foundational - not incidental. Terrorism is foundational not only in how Israel was created, but in how it maintains itself: through systematic violence and coercion aimed at a civilian population to achieve political goals - textbook definition. Being an occupying power which requires violence to sustain itself, whilst being an apartheid state - is just a “degree” of terrorism.

Western values have a right to defend themself. The US started on genocide and it’s primacy is ending in one too - along with the Wests place on the world stage.

“Two staff members from the Israeli embassy were shot dead outside a Jewish museum in Washington DC “ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9vgrkdje1ro.amp Some are saying it’s a false flag to garner support for war against Iran or to take attention off of what Israel is doing as the world rushes to condemn and take action against them. Regardless, its quite a tense moment right now.. Apparently if no deal goes through with US Iran, then Israel vows to attack nuclear sites. That would inevitably start a hot war and draw the US in - which is the psychotic line of logic Bibi / Israel is running on. What Israel is calling for crosses Irans red line, what Iran deems is their right as a sovereign crosses Israel’s.. Brother Bolsen just uploaded on this shooting: Give it a listen. One of his shorter videos of 7 min for those with short attention spans lol

Seems like more than just 10% are radical, unless withholding aid isn’t considered radical to Zionists.

What you wrote “bill comes due” reminded me of a vide going into the backdrop to all this: As far as the solution goes, here’s vid on strategic self sufficiency which is the name of the game going forward. Although it’s directed at global south countries the concepts can be applied within the West. A way to think about it is that capital and vulture funds were born in the West but have outgrown it to become transnational. They dictate to the nest they outgrew from, and view it as a hunting ground rather than a home. Capital is untethered from principle and long time horizons - which is why things are done which aren’t in the nations interest. So Westerners themselves have to wrestle with this Frankenstein the same way foreign nations do. Some solutions revolving around localism with a Islamic bent, though insightful:

What a journalist:

It’s a shame that Hindutva India chooses to emulate the most psychotic country in the world - Israel. Denial of investigation, collective punishment, vile comments, viewing Muslims as invaders to their land, terrorist rhetoric projected to an entire group, media echo chambering and troll armies online. Many Israeli twitter accounts spewing Zionist talking points have been busted for being Indian lol They also have a hubris stemming from some sort of complex - and can’t assess what’s rationally in their own countries interest. Not being in good relations with al your neighbours and focusing too much on pleasing the US is dumb. It’s misaligned to geographic reality. This is a large account with a comment mocking collective punishment: Similar levels of psychopathy as Zionists. @Ajay This guy has some of the best analysis on geopolitics especially in the military domain: The threshold for war has been lowered to a dangerous level ie every time a terrorist attack happens India can just strike Pakistan. But a terrorist attack can happen independently of the Pakistani state / even if it could have origins or operated from there by non-state actors, that can’t justify two nations at a state level coming head to head. Tick tock ..

Could just be words to insulate them from the fallout:

Think Nivsch means the documentaries focus on the radical 5% of the population but that 10% do think Israel should settle Gaza which represents the extreme interpretation of Zionism. Hard to pinpoint what percentage of Israel is radical and what constitutes radical. Going by some polls it seems there is a sizeable problem. Even it were a minority, the issue is they control the state apparatus committing the wrongs.

Who gives a fuck about Eurovision when Israel’s firstly not even in the EU or Europe, and is committing a genocide which now main stream Western outlets are on the edge of calling it out on - because they don’t want to be the last ones standing who didn’t. Operation Gideon Chariot is under way as what seems to be the final solution. Not even a peep on the forum but talks of veganism and Eurovision. The level of tone deafness is honestly insane. F**ck Israel, the US and the West (not in their entirety). Even the Israel / Palestine thread is quiet these days because people are morally / emotionally exhausted and not shocked from what’s occurring. It or they just can’t figure out how to accommodate what their “civilization” is doing within spiral a dynamics framework. “Development”