zazen

@PurpleTree Dave Smith is pretty awesome. Debating Konstantin on Piers Morgan which will be interesting. Just uploaded:

If we're going to judge a countries ability to have nukes by how much danger it poses then USA would be at the top of that list. Should they be stripped of their nukes? Or even Israel after all they've done in the past year or two. Iran's behavior is geopolitical and deterrent based, not genocidal and domination based. They even have a fatwa against nuclear weapons - but will bend to pursuing it out of necessity like a cat in a corner - which Israel has put them in now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei's_fatwa_against_nuclear_weapons The best bet to avoid them having nukes was diplomacy which worked to achieve the JCPOA between 2015 and 2018. That was left by uni-laterally by the US which is why they started enriching uranium to a threshold level today. In the past Netenyahu was lying out of his ass about them getting nukes, but today they are closer than ever because of the behaviour of the US - Israel. The point of them being close to nukes is actually half true today, more than it was in the past. They are at the threshold level today and remain there so that they can obtain nukes within a shorter time frame - if they felt existentially threatened. And this is all in reaction to the US leaving the nuclear deal they had in place. Why did Israel strike Iran now while they were in negotiations and had a talk coming up on Sunday in Oman, and killed the key negotiator? Diplomacy works, but its one side that seems to sabotage it time and again. It was also diplomacy that got back the hostages Israel always cries about. The issue is, Israel can't bomb nuclear related knowledge out of Iranian brains - unless they genocide the country. Even if the facilities are destroyed today, they can just be built up and we'll be in the same position in a few years. If a dog ate my math homework, I still know math. It's funny how we call governments we don't like regimes. Imagine saying the Irish regime is anti-semitic because it's against the Israeli states actions lol.

Violent rhetoric without violent action, is still less dangerous than polite rhetoric masking violent actions. The US isn't loud and violent in rhetoric (maybe with Trump now lol) yet the US strangles you in a suit and with a silent smile - in the case of Iran - economic strangulation, coups etc. Their violence is in sophisticated think tank pieces talking about how to best subjugate you: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/which-path-to-persia-options-for-a-new-american-strategy-toward-iran/ I do agree though - Iran's rhetoric is strategically self-defeating even though its morally reactive and has reason to exist due to a hostile history with the West. Rhetoric shouldn't be that low, especially at the level of the State, even if the streets may speak that way. I think it's also baked into their identity - a proud civilization that has withstood many invasions and empires. Even the Shia religion's ethos is based upon the martyr of Imam Hussain who resisted a corrupt empire. Iran is unique in that it has a long imperial history,a civilization identity that predates Islam, a religious worldview that elevates resistance as a sacred duty, and a political identity of resistance which extended to become the notorious ''axis of resistance'' with whoever resists against Western empire and occupation of Middle Eastern lands. The one regime that needs changing is the one that insists on everyone else changing. The US may not speak as loudly against any adversaries, but they do silently topple them: Pictures speak louder than words. Imagine kicking off a nuclear arms race in the region, then bitching that others are racing too. The audacity of country X, to tell country Y, that they can't have weapon Z (nukes) - whilst that country has weapons A-Z, and has used them ruthlessly, including weapon Z (nukes) twice on a civilian population. ''How dare you want the same weapons as us! Don't you see how dangerous they are!'' sure we know, because YOU demonstrated that to us in Japan. ''We need these weapons to keep the peace'' sure, but YOU'VE delivered global chaos. ''Others are too barbaric to have these weapons'' sure, but YOU'RE the only ones to have used them twice on a defeated civilian population. Their foreign policy is ''Do as we say, not as we do.'' Deterrence to them is strategic savagery in a suit and tie - that only they are entitled to.

Like you said, change happens slowly and needs to happen organically on a peoples own timeline and according to their own customs and culture. Last year Pezeshkian was voted in who is a moderate reformist if I'm not mistaken. And we can see the change on the streets: The West should have let Iran integrate into the global economy instead of strangling it for decades. That wealth and development would speed up change by itself. War, economic strangulation and instability aren't the conditions for social progress to happen - but in fact the opposite. Groups with hard line stances take up and hold power during hard times. Like that whole hard times creates strong men cycle - they are in charge during conditions of survival. Hard times gets your hard liners. The West think they can bomb change into place through a shock and awe campaign - which isn't even about change on a social level but is a moral cover for the interests of power. Otherwise they wouldn't be supporting Saudi Arabia all these decades. They act like their freedom bombs are going to blow the hijabs off or some bullshit. A longer video showing Tehran (ignore the clickbait thumbnail) : It looks cleaner and safer than most ''wealthy'' capitals (NYC, London, Paris).

Agreed there's domestic issues, just doesn't give imperial actors moral license to do as they wish. It's like a chicken or the egg situation of who caused it. Timeline wise it looks more like Iran is reacting to the West than the other way round. Mossadegh was couped by CIA/MI6 in 1953 because he nationalized Iranian oil, then came the Western backed Shah who was known to be brutal (his secret police SAVAK was trained by the CIA and Mossad), he was overthrown in the revolution, then US backed Saddams invasion of Iran in the 80's, post 2000's US bases encircle Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan, besides already existing along the gulf. Iran seems to be responding to imperialism more than being imperialistic itself. Its more reactive than offensive. Its forced to play asymmetrical defense and deterrence via proxies because it doesn’t have the military or economic weight to match the US / Israel alliance. The US doesn't need proxies because its muscle does the job directly with its own bases, fleets and carrier groups.

The audacity of a country for not wanting to submit to a superpower unable to have power besides or ahead of others but insists on having power over others. I agree that their rhetoric doesn't help - but I don't think its their sole purpose to eviscerate Americans and Israelis either. Its more political talk and symbolic defiance, more geopolitical rather than genocidal. When they chant ''Death to America'' aren't they referring to the system of imperialism and domination mainly? Israel is the local muscle platforming the forward base for that empire, beyond its own goals of denying Palestinian statehood. It would be good to solve the Palestinian question, but even better if it didn't continue to exist as a platform for that superpowers regional dominance, and then have to suffer for it in perpetual fear and blood. I'm sure Israel has its own ambitions of regional domination but they stem more from a distorted survival logic, rather than empire logic. That's what blurs the lines of who's behind imperial actions in the Middle East - people debate if it's Israel dictating things or the the US, and then come all the conspiracies. It's possible both interests are served - Israels survival, US's dominance. Though Israels survival is more at risk and is more existential than the US's dominance which is a geopolitical luxury - that should play into Israels calculations on how it wants to exist in the region.

It's actually absurd to think that a nation like Iran, home to the one of the oldest civilizations, can be told by a 200 year old nation like the US what it can and can't pursue whilst other nations not only have that same thing but have used it (US). Country X telling country Y they can't have weapon Z, meanwhile country X has weapons X,Y and Z and uses them ruthlessly. If we just put ourselves in Iran's shoes - a regional belligerent like Israel un-officially has nukes and is backed by the worlds largest imperial belligerent, your neighbor Pakistan has nukes and is ideologically divergent from you (if Sunni-Shia divide flares up), your rival Saudi Arabia is a short hop across the gulf is aligned to your nuke stacked neighbor and views you as a competitor for energy markets and regional dominance, and is also backed by the words imperial power looking to maintain its primacy. It would be absolutely idiotic to be in such a position and not pursue deterrence. Of course they tried pursuing this especially after the US inserted itself into the Middle East post 2000 in the war of terror knocking out country after country with think tanks clearly outlining their plans and ambitions. Yet, they still signed up to the nuclear deal in 2015, unilaterally left by the US in 2018, after which they were prompted to enrich to sit at the threshold level. And now again, they get preemptively attacked during negotiations, and their main negotiator decapitated.

Yeah, which is why I made sure to write could instead of would - it would be insane to do so. I can only imagine this as a last resort. Good point - similar to Israel. They simply conclude the worlds gonna hate no matter what so might as well just do what they want, and call critique anti-semitic. I do think there are some wider geopolitical goals for subduing Iran - that the US would like to pursue in order to maintain hegemony beyond just Israel wanting regional dominance. Iran sells 90% of its oil to China in currency other than the dollar. That lays a model path for other resource rich nations to de-dollarize. If the gulf were to ever think about trading oil in Yuan, surely regime changing or bombing Iran might make them think twice. Iran is like a gatekeeper nation in the largest landmass on earth - Eurasia. It sits between North-South and East-West corridors overlooking multiple chokepoints by sea and land. It's resource rich, has a large population, a decent industrial-science base, and is one of the oldest civilization. If it weren't sanctioned it would eclipse its rival across the gulf in regional clout. It's hard for empire to have such a nation be openly defiant of it, especially when it positions itself as the resistance. They can't have a example of such a nation existing in case others follow suit. Now we have BRICS and BRI of which Iran is integrating into - with China Russia Iran having their own axis for Eurasia itself - it's a central node. If Russia and China are too big to confront might as well go for Iran to slow down multi-polarity.

@Nivsch Hope you and everyone there are safe and this ends soon. Hezbollah has been exhausted for sure. I think Assad falling has helped Israel greatly as now Syrian airspace is clear for Israel to fly through and attack Iran. Also, supply lines to Hezbollah are disrupted which means they are hesitant to start something with Israel if they can't secure what they need for a prolonged conflcit. The issue with nuclear is that you can't bomb knowledge away. Even if Israel/US delay Iran being able to get nukes - the point is they have the technical knowhow and can eventually get them if they wanted to. It's like a dog eating your math homework - you lose the homework but you still know math. The US getting involved and bombing the Fordow facility under the mountain risks too much blow back. Strait of Hormuz could get shut, oil prices skyrocket affecting the world, US bases get hit by hypersonics, domestic US anger and international condemnation and fracturing of ties. The only way was and is diplomacy, which the 2015 signed JCPOA signed achieved, which Trump ripped up in 2018, which prompted Iran to enrich to a threshold point - which the US/Israel now bitch about and use a pre-text to go to war over. They were literally in negotiations - then Israel struck Iran and killed the key guy in the negotiation team - Ali Shamkhani. They can't just expect a deal in 60 days, this isn't wedding planning or a group chat trying to coordinate a holiday. The JCPOA took over 2 years, and this is writing the future of a entire regions with multiples states involved. It's not even a negotiation window, just a ultimatum. Sell me your house for pennies or I'll bomb it anyway is mob rule and imperial flexing not state to state diplomacy of mature actors. How does the world view the US now as a partner worth making deals with? All this being lost for what..Israel? Or they have their own interests and just use Israel as the scapegoat and moral cover.. If Israel wasn't hated enough already, imagine once the US gets dragged into this and we start getting US bodies in bags being flown home. Also, the hypocrisy is clear for the world to see - as if it wasn't already. Israel secretly has nukes and isn't signed to the non proliferation treaty (NPT) which means the IAEA can't inspect them. But Iran is and does have inspections. Yet - the strategic ambiguity of Israel is allowed but Iran being way less ambiguous isn't.

Vs the guy she told you not to worry about They didn’t perform with the polish and energy required of a superpower. Even Chinas female military parade projects more stregnth:

Just imagine that even on a right wingers X poll the consensus is not in favour of Israel: 90% of his audience doesn’t hold the opinion he’s paid to have. His mind just got Dun Kirk’d.

Predictable as Israel can’t stand on its own. Iran was caught off guard initially with some insane Israeli intelligence and operations. That element of surprise advantage is now gone. Irans missiles can out last Israel’s interceptors, and Israel don’t have a large enough airforce for the size of Iran to target missile launchers which can be moved around and come up from underground to be fired. Iran makes missiles like Cubans make cigars. And no Western air defence can intercept the advanced ones - meaning Israel is a sitting duck. Israel being small as it is also means its core assets can be wiped out within days IF Iran wanted to and had no care for restraint on an escalation ladder. But obviously, this is all about roping in the US to do its bidding, if not the US wanting to do this already but needing some plausible deniability - using Israel as the excuse / moral cover. Timestamp 39:50 where Professor Marandi cooks this reporter like a Khoobideh. The Middle East has a right to defend itself from Western occupation. The US has a right to defend itself against Zionist occupation of its political/security apparatus too. Humans have a right to defend themselves from all sick ideaologies leading to death and destruction - radical Zionism, Islamism, Communism, Nazism. Eylon Levy is back lol.

Hair did, nails did, errythang did 💅🏻 shocking they’re humans living life. Have they lifted the repressive hijab enforcement or something if anyone knows? It’s possible to be against a repressive regime and simultaneously imperial action against it - it being used as a pawn in geopolitics by players who couldn’t give a shit about it. Maybe instead of 100% democracy the West only need to liberate them like 20% more with pride month.

My favourite is khoobideh (kebab) with mirza gasshemi (roasted eggplant). Shit slaps. On another note - Tel Aviv just hit: A friend was asking me why Iran isn’t retaliating all day as it was getting hit quite bad, including VIP’s being decapitated to an embarrassing degree. Mainly due to visibility and partly being scrambled by Israel’s non stop attacks - as they have said it will be a 2 week long operation but it’s more of a full war now it seems. Iran seem to have been caught off guard as they were expecting nothing could possibly happen before talks on Sunday. Perhaps US-Israel played a double game to distract them with plausible deniability on the US’s part.

Probably for the same reason Trump is now calling off raids on farms and hospitality - economic interest. https://nypost.com/2025/06/12/business/trump-says-immigration-crackdown-hurting-us-workforce-signals-changes/ Like I wrote about a page or two back - incentives are the structural driver of decisions, ideaology is the overlay and justification. The US is structurally captured by economic interests / corporates. We all know this, which is why we bitch about it here and there on this forum - before the conversation gets constantly de-railed into an emotional and ideological left right dialectic.

There is obviously posturing in negotiations - which is what the whole withdrawal from US bases may have been about - to show Iran they mean business on Sundays final talk. But that was seems to be de-railed by Israel’s attack. We’ll see if Iran remains restrained like last time when they attacked with warning and co-ordination to save face. Seems to be following the Iraq WMD script. This was written yesterday: Israel can’t prevent Iran from gaining a nuke as they have the knowledge to do so. It may delay or make them think twice about it - but the ability remains. Irans facilities are deep within the mountains that can’t be reached. Trump has said the bottom line is no nukes for Iran. Irans has said bottom line is no one can tell us not to enrich uranium for civilian purposes at least. When Israel says Iran is just around the corner from a nuke today - they aren’t wrong. But it’s not because they are making one - it’s because their level of enrichment is at the threshold where if they decide to go ahead and make a nuke, they could increase it and have one within days. A bad attack on Iran just makes it more likely as they feel at existential risk. Why would Iran trust Israel/US? Gaddafi in Libya agreed to abandon his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program in exchange for normalised relations and he was couped. The Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) was struck in 2015 and complied with and yet Trump pulled out of it 3 years later. The region has been destroyed by these same players and your next on the chopping block expected to trust them..

Something is afoot. Iran-US talks not going as planned, Iran releasing intelligence of Israeli nuclear assets, Israel maybe prepping something against Iran potentially .. it’s gonna be a wild summer.

Not all nationalists are imperialists - though it can be used to justify it. China is nationalist whilst working with other nations and not against them. Many anti-imperialists are nationalists who resisted imperialism. Historically it was nationalist imperialism that ruined neighbouring nations. But thats evolved and fragmented - we now have anti-globalist populists who are nationalists divorced from imperialist action abroad, because they see it as a waste of national resources they very much need. Yet there’s still a corporate, military, and financial power blocs of elites who have no loyalty to any nation and still act imperially. They’re not patriotic but opportunistic. So nationalism once fueled empire, but is now often divorced from imperialism, and the real imperialists are no longer national but borderless.

Yeah, lawful doesn't always mean legitimate ie slavery was once legal. The abstraction of laws don't negate the reality of survival. Both sides have a argument around survival - the right frame it as national, the left frame it as personal/familial. The right is saying we need to protect the body politic at the level of the collective / nation. The left is saying we need to protect the bodies of people - at the level of the individual / neighborhood. The liberal left can be too compassionate of the individual that they overlook the collective, while the conservative right can be too dis-compassionate of individuals for the sake of the collective. The issue among the right is that they have split definitions of who they consider as the collective - civic nationalists (value based) vs etho-nationalists (race based) Leo is correct in that had the law been enforced appropriately before, it wouldn't have to be disproportionately enforced today so ruthlessly with much more collateral damage.

Posted above comment before seeing yours. It's one thing I'm conflicted on. What primarily drives action: ideology or incentive? I think its incentive with an overlay of ideology. If actors can instrumentalize ideology for their own ends, they will. If capital can capitalize compassion, it will. Liberalism’s failures are real, but its failures are also useful to capital. I'm not sure if liberal morality is causative or instrumental. Compassion can be rented when useful and discarded when redundant. If US is ruled by a corporate-oligarchy then cost-benefit analysis is primary, and morality is secondarily justified after the fact. If compassion prevented enforcement, why hasn't it prevented other predatory actions like mass incarceration, wars, corporate bailouts, denial of universal healthcare, under funding of critical investment..doesn't look like compassion dictates or prevents much in the US. Why has it been tolerated across parties for decades? One is political cost, another is because undocumented immigration has been profitable by providing corporations third world labor costs within first world borders. I'll have to think over it. But yeah, leftists don't get nationalism or its importance. That's the irony: they rail against corporations with no national loyalty, then dismiss nationalists and conflate every one of their concerns with racism. They reject the only counter-force who have a vested interest in their nation, against those who have interests beyond nations - trans-national elites. The issue is that a whole bunch of racists are part of that group too.

Border has the word order in it - but the order of the past differs to the order of today which there are new incentives for. Incentives primarily drive actions while ideology justify it - if the actions being taken based on those incentives don't look good, it's ideologies purpose to make them look good. This is why we're told that these raids and deportations are being done for ''nationalism'' and ''security'' = national security. Whilst that has elements of truth and validness, its not the key driver. In the US where profit is King, everything else becomes its servant. Racist ethno-nationalists ideologues jumping on this bandwagon is secondary to the primary driver being the profit motive. Illegality isn't objective but conditional on profitability. When undocumented immigrants served a profitable function, their "illegality" was tolerated - now that they cease to serve a profitable function to the same extent - suddenly their illegality is a liability looking for a way to be monetized. In the past, legality didn't matter because profit sanitized illegality. Today, illegality is weaponized for revenue. Legality is simply a selective tool serving profit and power, not a principle applied universally. In 2025 - automation, AI, reshoring without labor, and rising political instability make that labor force less economically useful and more socially expendable. At the same time, the rise of the carceral-surveillance economy created new ways to monetize enforcement through deportation quotas, detention centers, tech surveillance, and federal contracts. The same system that once profited from their presence now profits from their removal. The cost-benefit equation has shifted: See:

It's best to view the state not as a actor but a broker for elite interests. Politics is noise, profit and power are the signal. Chat GPT summary: Organized Summary & Analysis: State Capture and the Illusion of American Democracy 1. Democracy as Illusion: The speaker opens with a brutal paradox: Americans vote in a democracy on election day but spend most of their lives inside authoritarian structures, particularly in the private sector. Offices, companies, and corporations are not democratic spaces. In fact, they are "democracy-free zones" where the principles of representation and accountability are absent. The workplace, where people spend two-thirds of their waking lives, is effectively a dictatorship. Best Quote: "You punch in at work, you punch out of your democracy." 2. Private Sector Supremacy and State Capture: Over time, the American state has ceded more and more control to the private sector, which has now effectively captured it. The result is a government that acts less like a public servant and more like a broker for private interests. This is described as a "stack of authoritarianisms" nested inside each other—corporations within monopolies within financial behemoths. Best Quote: "Congress is nothing but the customer service desk for the Fortune 500." 3. Thorium Example: Missed Opportunities for Humanity: The abandonment of thorium-based nuclear energy in favor of more weaponizable uranium highlights how military-industrial interests override human advancement. China's progress in this space is contrasted with the U.S.'s retreat, not because of technical limitations but because thorium could not be easily weaponized. Best Quote: "If it couldn't facilitate war and killing, it was deprioritized." 4. Privatization of Immigration Enforcement: The speaker argues that ICE has become a corporate arm of private prison contractors, functioning not as law enforcement but as a profit-generating logistics operation. Immigration enforcement is not about law but commerce, and each arrest or deportation is a financial transaction. Best Quote: "ICE is not a law enforcement agency. It's a mercenary force under contract to private corporations." 5. Expansion Beyond Immigrants: The speaker warns that the apparatus being normalized against immigrants will inevitably be expanded to target other vulnerable populations: the poor, minorities, protesters, and political dissidents. Surveillance infrastructure, AI raids, and detention centers are described as pre-fascist architecture. Best Quote: "This isn't just a pilot project. It's a supply chain." 6. Corporate Logic Driving Policy: Investor briefings celebrate deportation orders. Stocks rise with every new detention center. The entire immigration system has become a monetized business model, incentivizing human suffering and undermining the moral foundation of law. Best Quote: "Respecting rights is financially inefficient. Violating dignity is now incentivized." 7. State Has Abdicated: This is not just corruption. It is capture. The state has fully abdicated its monopoly on legitimate violence and handed it over to private interests. It is no longer governing—it is facilitating corporate domination. Best Quote: "Deregulation is just the state regulating its own abdication." 8. America as a Captured State: What remains of the state is described as a "brand," not a real body politic. Like Rome before its fall, the U.S. is using privatized mercenaries to manage domestic unrest. The result is the hollowing out of legitimacy and the normalization of emergency repression as governance. Best Quote: "You're being policed by marauders and mercenaries." 9. International Legitimacy Lost: The United States is no longer seen as a moral leader. Its violations of international law, inhumane detention practices, and erosion of legal norms have destroyed its soft power globally. Best Quote: "Your whole brand is tarnished. America can never again call itself the beacon of liberty." 10. Call to Action and Moral Clarity: Finally, the speaker calls for resistance, warning that silence or inaction is complicity. The system currently targeting immigrants will eventually target everyone. The moral high ground belongs to those who resist, expose, and protect. Best Quote: "If you're not resisting, you're colluding. If you're not protecting them, you're rehearsing for when no one protects you." Conclusion: This is not a hyperbolic rant, but a structural critique of a system in late-stage neoliberal collapse. It presents a chilling but grounded diagnosis: the American state has been fully captured by private capital, and its institutions now function to maximize profit through domination. The capture is complete, the moral framework of governance is dead, and the only thing that remains is resistance—or submission.

Statesmen are ruthless, tyrants are evil - yet both have power. Power is leverage - the ability to shape others without being shaped. Some forms of leverage are cleaner or dirtier than others. Power dynamics require compromises - but there’s a difference between strategic compromise and moral surrender to the dark side. If power is the engine, principle is the steering. Easier said than done.