zazen

@BlueOak Yeah most likely if no political resolution comes it looks like it will be a frozen conflict eventually. The thing about drones is true - but I don't know how much they obsolete manpower. If drones were enough we wouldn't have seen Russia makes the territorial gains they made in 2025, which before that had been barely anything for a good two years. I think drones make it very costly to push the front line and slow down the tempo, but don't erase it completely. Russia also came back to match Ukraine with its own improvement in drones so it seems like the side that can keep feeding into the grinder is wins ground - drones can't hold territory only manpower still can, though under the cover and with the help of drones and at greater cost and caution from incoming drones from the other side. It usually takes a average 3;1 ratio to offensively take ground, which is why Russia suffered more in taking what they did. If drones were enough of a game changer we'd surely have seen Ukraine be able to push back and re-take ground from the Russian's but that still requires manpower which is why they didn't. And now that initial advantage of a gap with drones has shrunk as Russia's caught up with their own. Soldiers still matter but drones heavily tax the movement of those soldiers and increase the cost of attrition. They increase the attrition - but the end is still that the side with more meat to grind endures and makes ground or fortifies any taken positions. This is also why Putin or Russia trying it with any other EU country (which legit has article 5) let alone attempt to take all of Ukraine is so over blown. At best, they may push to the river which is logistically a nightmare to cross, and consider that a natural border to draw the line. Perhaps attempt Odessa to further secure black sea, but even that would be very costly.

Multiple factions have their reasons to approve of this move in Venezuela. For Trump who's commercially minded and thinks very simplistically from a lens of power and money it was an easy sell = take oil get rich lol. For neocon hawks like Rubio and Lindsey Graham its more ideological (anti-socialist, Monroe Doctrine, exceptionalism). The financial and industrial (big oil) elite aren't thinking they've hit a jackpot of oil supply - largest oil reserves doesn't mean profitable oil because type of oil, cost of extraction, political cost etc all matter. It would cost time and 10s of billions to re-vamp the infrastructure - all in a revolutionary minded jurisdiction that's not secure. Those investments could just be taken and nationalized down the line. What it's thought to provide US capital elites and the US empire more broadly is dollar dominance and system compliance. It protects (tries to) the platform their wealth relies on. The platform being US reserve currency and treasuries underpinning it - which is more essential than simply the product (oil). Apple cares more about the dominance of the platform (OS) than the apps (product) on it. The idea is to signal to the world that the US (OS) is still strong and that flirting with playing outside the system can have consequences. This can obviously and most likely will backfire. The US flopped on the trade war with China, has struggled dealing with the Houthis in the Red Sea, hasn't managed to eradicate Hamas via its ally in Israel, and still has a defiant Iran after their little party trick hitting a mountain which they framed as victory. Russia despite being sanctioned is chugging along with trade and India hasn't bent the knee to follow suit with those sanctions either. Seems a show of force out of desperation was in order. It's not a full on regime change yet, but a regime adjustment by taking out the leader. The regime still stands and Trumps notion of running Venezuela from the US whilst warning the new head is basically saying ''your our puppet now and must follow orders. If not, then we'll come in with round 2 for a full regime op” - which he's also threatened. What happens next we'll have to see. If the people don't see any improvements in their living standard within a reasonable time they could revolt, including insurgency, which may happen regardless against US actions. The issue is improvements takes time - especially in a petro-state which needs oil refinery investment and revenue + nation building. If the new head opens up Venezuela we could see a very similar parallel to Yeltsin in Russia that caused a shit show of asset stripping and privatization that caused in-equality etc and eventually gave rise to Putin who came in hard fisted against that neo-liberal shock therapy to stabilize things. Or we could just see US entanglement and Vietnam 2.0 which will seal the end of the empire.

Katie Miller is Stephen Miller's wife (the White House deputy chief of staff for policy). See what she tweeted about Greenland and what Denmark’s Ambassador to the US responded: https://x.com/dkambusa/status/2007607563601273179?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ Russia’s special military op at least has some security logic behind it that can be understood - even if the response to events on the ground are completely unjustifiable and aggressive. This US special op doesn’t and is blatant imperialism. Had China or Russia placed bases and missiles pointed to US then it would have introduced a security logic making it more understandable. Maduro may be bad (many Venezuelans are happy for his removal) but the system that decides who’s “bad” is even more dangerous because it’s unaccountable and selectively applied by a US led Western hegemonic order that can unilaterally impose sanctions - that deteriorate conditions that render the leader of a country less legitimate and thus more ripe for overthrow. All the Euro leadership is barking and toeing the same line “Maduro was illegitimate and we believe in international law and democracy” LOL Maduro was a democratically (maybe contested) elected leader governing a fragile petro-state, whose legitimacy was eroded through external economic warfare that created the very conditions later used to justify his removal. Now ya’ll know what BRICS and the global south are trying to extricate themselves from and why. https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2025/9/3/us-and-eu-sanctions-have-killed-38-million-people-since-1970 ”The Lancet Global Health, which gives us a global view for the first time. Led by the economist Francisco Rodriguez at the University of Denver, the study calculates the total number of excess deaths associated with international sanctions from 1970 to 2021. The results are staggering. In their central estimate, the authors find that unilateral sanctions imposed by the US and EU since 1970 are associated with 38 million deaths. In some years, during the 1990s, more than a million people were killed. In 2021, the most recent year of data, sanctions caused more than 800,000 deaths. According to these results, several times more people are killed by sanctions each year than are killed as direct casualties of war (on average, about 100,000 people per year). More than half of the victims are children and the elderly, people who are most vulnerable to malnutrition. The study finds that, since 2012 alone, sanctions have killed more than one million children. Hunger and deprivation are not an accidental by-product of Western sanctions; they are a key objective. This is clear from a State Department memo written in April 1960, which explains the purpose of US sanctions against Cuba. The memo noted that Fidel Castro – and the revolution more broadly – enjoyed widespread popularity in Cuba. It argued that “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba,” by “denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”. The power of Western sanctions hinges on their control over the world’s reserve currencies (the US dollar and the Euro), their control over international payment systems (SWIFT), and their monopoly over essential technologies (eg satellites, cloud computation, software). If countries in the Global South wish to chart a more independent path towards a multipolar world, they will need to take steps to limit their dependence in these respects and thus insulate themselves from backlash. The recent experience of Russia shows that such an approach can succeed.”

China plays the long game - it won’t move unless the timeline gets compressed with the crossing of red lines on the US’s part - which they haven’t yet. Chips alone won’t be fought over because a war means the loot (fabs) will be destroyed anyway. Both US and China are also heavily investing in domestic capacity for semi’s so Taiwan will lose that monopoly. Chips are critical but not existential to the point of going to war against a peer competitor over. Taiwan hasn’t formally or de facto integrated into any sort of rival military architecture - no permanent US bases, defence treaty flirtation, or NATO style command integration. Independence rhetoric is mostly symbolic but not crossed into being cemented structurally by law or UN recognition - red lines haven’t been crossed the way they were in Ukraine where the time to act was compressed. China has so far tolerated plenty of ambiguity and so has Taiwan maintained it without clear defection because all parties involved know the line. “Lay low and bide your time” - some Chinese don.

If the US really wanted to promote global democracy they could offer some kind of NATOesque democracy enforcement treaty. Any leader whose approval rating sinks below a certain level gets efficient Maduro treatment. Bin Laden and Gaddafi era was whack a mole logic, now it’s pluck a homie logic. Could be as easy as so: Ironically - the countries that may trigger article pluck a homie more often aren the ones currently lecturing everyone else about democracy. Merz, Starmer and Macron would get couped by their own rules. Real poll-itic.

I initially commented calmly, but have no issue matching energy back when responded to with temper tantrums. Tao Te Geopolitics and happy new year - what a start lol.

Same - imagine the Hollywood movies coming out about this. US and Israel are very competent at these kind of precision operations and shock and awe campaigns. They accomplished the operation at low cost to life - but maybe a cost will be paid in the long term depending on what happens next. Their saying it was a negotiated exit - I don't think US would have risked a messy kidnapping had they not had them on side. Must be bought off military that allowed things to go this smoothly. Only question now is whether factions fight with ensuing guerrilla warfare due to a power vacuum or does it stabilize under a US puppet like that nobel prize winner. Like what Jack says: A lot of Venezuelans definitely despised Maduro - but what comes next like you said may be worse. We just have to look at history - which tracks till today as to which nations are ''demonised'' as a axis of evil or resistance by the current Western hegemony. The states with memory of submission refuse to repeat it - and that refusal threatens the universality of the current system. After the fall of the USSR, Boris Yeltsin submitted to the Western order (economic shock therapy) which lead to high in-equality, privatized asset stripping and looting of the economy. That led to Putin coming in with a hard fist stabilizing things. Leading till today. Iran learnt the same lesson earlier with the nationalising of their resources under Mossadegh leading to a British-US backed coup installing the Shah, which later lead to the revolution. Resisting till today. China learnt the same lesson even earlier during Pax-Britannica from the century of humiliation and opium wars. Lesson being - never again allow external powers to dictate the terms of development. There's a common pattern to why nations are lumped together to be ''contained''. They are civilizationally strong enough and geographically insulated enough to resist and rebel (in Irans case) submission to the US led, Western dominated order that sets the terms to their favor. In the world system you either have those that are integrated (close allies) or submitted (weaker nations), or those that resist and hedge (swing states like India or the gulf). Much of the global south would like to resist or hedge but don't have the strength / leverage to do so. The rise of China leading the way with stronger nations in BRICS have given confidence to smaller / weaker nations to collectively re-balance the world order on equitable terms. What is being challenged is the West being able to unilaterally dictate - or 15% of the world population dictate to 85% of the world population because of a inherited colonial legacy system they reign supreme in. Venezuela is being used a example to stay compliant to the current system and not defect - or else suffer the consequence. If you have a openly defiant example of a country in your own hemisphere - what signal does that send to other countries in that same hemisphere? ''Oh we can just trade outside the dollar system with China and engage in BRICS development projects and survive the hissy fit sanctions from daddy US?'' not so fast because you'll be couped hombre lol. Tao Te Geopolitics.

Your way too emotional for politics. Didn't you start a thread ranting about how you ''no longer care about politics'' lol you already failed your new year resolution 3 days in son. You also have another thread asking ''why the US wants to steal Venezuela's oil& resources?'' to which I calmly went through all the possible reasons and came to the most plausible one in my opinion. You got triggered by that just like you have now. Have you answered your own question yet or are you still twiddling your thumbs confused about what's going on? Who knew that militarizing borders of buffer zones between great powers triggers security responses - whoever does it. This is how great powers behave once escalation is already underway. The Cold War ended rhetorically but NATO's military posture never rolled back - NATO nuclear sharing has had nukes stationed in Germany and Turkey within shot of Russia for decades. That same architecture crept forward towards Russia - and rightly so for the countries responding to Russian imperialism of the past. But there is a red line between great powers that overrides even the ''democratic choice'' of a nation to choose what it wants to do - and that was Ukraine. This is the distinction I was making - when influence and integrated trade turns into imperialistic power moves turning a country into a military threat against a rival power. Russia didn't station nuclear weapons in Belarus as some long standing imperial project - Belarus has been a Russian security partner for decades without nuclear deployment. The decision to move tactical nukes into Belarus was announced in 2023 and only came after - NATO’s eastward expansion, Ukraine becoming a de facto NATO military partner, massive Western arms flows, intelligence sharing, Finland joining NATO and Sweden moving to join after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. It's a reactive escalation, not a initial encroachment or posture. Explaining how a power acts isn't justifying it or endorsing it. We both don't agree - I don't elevate democracy as some absolute value in a black and white sense like a libtard - because there are certain democratic choices that will be overridden by power and survival dynamics. Small states don’t get infinite freedom without consequences in a great power system. If you love democracy so much then why are you bitching on a forum about Trump being democratically elected - by that same logic Hitler was elected democratically and should be embraced because ''democracy''. The difference is between what really is a security threat vs isn't. Same distinction as earlier - economic integration and political alignment doesn't necessarily cause a ''security'' threat. Massively arming up a country, creating military inter-operability, intelligence sharing and flirting with joining a security treaty by a country that openly wants to contain it's neighbor rival does pose a threat. Russia and China weren't doing that in Venezuela - as yet. On the one hand you talk about Western aggression and how Putin is cornered like animal bound to react - yet when I comment you forget all that nuance and have a temper tantrum against me lol your literally all over the place. I condemn all imperialism - but get correct on what is imperialism, or shut up and stick to your new year resolution by staying out of poltics which requires some minimal intelligence and emotional control. I literally said ''On the flip side - the imperialism of another rival power wanting to use a neighboring or regional country as a forward military base is something that any rational power will respond to. So if China or Russia were to station missiles pointed towards the US from Venezuela - it's totally rational for the US to do something about it and though unjustifiable - is understandable.'' By your own logic since you dick ride ''democracy'' and ''freedom'' - if Mexico or Canada chose to ally with Russia and China in a military sense - the US should just sit down and do nothing because the people ''chose it'. This is utopian thinking that disregards how power dynamics work in the real world - it doesn't mean endorsing the existence of power dynamics but acknowledging they exist and acting accordingly. Utopians deny power dynamics exist or moralise them away. Imperialists indulge power dynamics and justify them through dominance. Pragmatists accept power dynamics as a unavoidable reality that needs to be managed through diplomacy and restraint with force being a last resort if all else fails.

Even if they did care (many American oppose US adventurism) their democratic system wouldn't help resolving it the way they think. Because there is a deep state / permanent overlapping of private interests that use the state as a platform to exercise their interests THROUGH, at the expense of the national interest or goodwill of the demos / people. They are insulated from the ballot box decisions and above being disciplined by the state because the cultural DNA of the West is opposed to centralizing enough power in the state to be able to do so. This is why we have changing politicians but rarely a change in foreign policy or domestic policy that challenges powerful interests. Cucked to empire.

Highly unlikely WW3 will happen. Venezuela isn't existential for China or Russia to come to the rescue or whilst heightening tensions with the US. What's happening I think is we'r transitioning from a uni-polar world order to a multi-polar/nodal one where all the great-middle powers are jockeying/probing for position in that new system - whilst consolidating what they ''perceive'' as critical to them. Red lines and thresholds are being tested (even with smaller actors like UAE-Saudi like we just saw in Yemen). But the great powers themselves will avoid direct conflict, just as we have seen in Ukraine - even whilst covert proxy conflict occurs via ISR, intelligence, arms and drone operations carried out by the CIA. Nothing overt can happen (Tomahawks example) because the stakes are too high.Of course the chances aren't 0% either - because miscalculations can happen and things can spiral out of control during these transitions. The turbulence comes from flashpoints where these proxy fights will occur with some being existential for those powers ie Ukraine right on the border of Russia, Taiwan seen as part of China, or if Russia/China were to station up in Mexico or Canada right on the US border which they haven't even got close to doing.

True This is wrong on so many levels. You have just validated Putin's whole worldview with that statement. If Ukraine wants to be in the west then Venezuela can be in Brics. USA has no business invading a country just because China is an expansionist power that wants to have influence in the US's neighborhood. The west is an expansionist power too, there is no universal law that allows only the west to expand. As I said again, if Ukriane which is Russia's neighbourhood is allowed to go west, then America's neighborhood is allowed to go BRICS. What's being collapsed into one category or conflated is that economic expansion automatically means military / imperial expansion. Influence is different to imperialism. Influence isn't a reason to go to war with another country as you said. On the flip side - the imperialism of another rival power wanting to use a neighboring or regional country as a forward military base is something that any rational power will respond to. So if China or Russia were to station missiles pointed towards the US from Venezuela - it's totally rational for the US to do something about it and though unjustifiable - is understandable. Same goes for the West doing similar in Russia or China's vicinity. The point is that China and Russia haven't done that in Venezuela. The US moving on Venezuela now isn't reacting to a military threat but this behaviour is disciplinary ie Empire Discipline. It's saying ''you don't get to sit inside our hemisphere and outside our unipolar system''. It's setting a precedent for others to fall into line - that there will be consequences for defecting from the status quo and current world system in which the US leads and the West dominates. It's entrenching dollar dominance and the ''exorbitant privilege'' that comes with that. But yes - China or Russia haven't turned their economic alignment or political signalling with Venezuela into a embedded military architecture creating a military threat platform. Not at all in the same way the West has done and is doing in Ukraine and along China in Taiwan, Japan or Philippines which are much closer to China than Venezuela is to the US.

True - they are complimentary, though asymmetrically with China having a upper hand due to its sheer size. Russia solves some of China's vulnerabilities by being a single resource rich state that isn't hostile. Beyond just energy it also has metals etc it provides. Just geographically it's quite indispensable to China because it firstly provides strategic depth from being encircled from its Western flank, whilst having one of the longest borders in the world be secure due to good relations with its neighbor. Russia also helps with nuclear know how and military (submarines, engines, early warning defense systems etc) and also operational warfare because it has more experience. That's why they also do many drills together. Russia is a test case proof of systems concept that countries can trade outside the Western system which is weaponized politically - leading the way for other Global South countries to follow suit (majority of the world against a colonial legacy built world order by a Western led 12-15% of the worlds population). The Arctic is going to be more important over the years also. It has plenty of resources and can cut trade routes by approx 30-40%. Russia gives China a land route option that avoids any type of naval blockade antics by the US. That's why Belt and Road, Silk Road, Arctic pass are invested in - taking away the US's ability to interdict and blockade China on which it is heavily dependent to feed and energize itself. With Russia having the largest ice breaker fleet and China's capital, tech and infrastructure expertise they can maximize the arctic exploration.This is also why the Trump admin are eyeing Greenland for ''National Security''. They can base up with proximity to Moscow and Russia's core from there. Speaking of vassalage - Ukraine is literally already there today by being completely reliant on external support from the West who themselves have local democratic politics and fiscal constraints to deal with. US has already minimized funding to pantry amounts (Congress approved, not just Trump), and left the bag with EU to deal with who are scrambling for funds. That's why they need to flirt with using Russian assets which would spectacularly back fire on their own financial systems and investability long term. Ukraine requires 10's to 100's of billions to stay afloat as a rump state with no revenue engine to pay that back unlike Japan and Germany post war. The industry is destroyed or to the East, and grain export isn't enough to cover the bill. Collapse narratives conflate stress with collapse. Too much catastrophizing. Westerners project their liberal democracy political lens onto a authoritarian centralized state who have levers to pull on and overcome obstacles that democracies would struggle with as people revolt for their freedoms over not ''voting for it''. They also don't seem to have a pulse on things when it comes to the Russian mindset and sentiment. Many Russian's feel to be under seige by a West that demonizes them with their Russiophobia which only galvanizes them even more. In fact Putin is keeping hardliners at bay who would act much more emotionally ie Medvedev and the like. Most likely no deal is happening - all this 90% agreed upon points mean shit when the 10% are the non-negotiable. After this drone attack on Putin (whether false flag or not) - that seals the fact that things will be decided on the battlefield. Turbulent year ahead it seems.

@Elliott Cane across this and remembered our convo:

Define: scathing 6 - 9 min of the following (or the whole damn vid) The West love bombed the world along with their real bombs. From another thrrad: ”Spiral Dynamics assumes a linear, universal trajectory of development that’s actually Western centric in both its aesthetic and milestones. It interprets progress through the lens of the Western psyche: material mastery (Orange), then moral overreach and empathy (Green), then synthesis of the tensions and contradictions in the below stages (Yellow). Other cultures with a spiritual or metaphysical anchor already resolved these tensions without collapsing into nihilism. Spiral Dynamics can’t see that because it reads history through a Western teleology and developmental arc, where everyone else looks like a “lower stage” for not following. It universalizes the Western developmental arc - as if that trajectory is the natural path for all humans. Every other culture is measured against this Western timeline and implicitly cast as “behind in development” rather than “differently developed”. The West lost its metaphysical grounding and then tried to reconstruct it through psychology - then mistake its own rediscovery of balance as “the next stage of evolution.” It’s civilizational amnesia posturing as progress. As if these colour coded values never existed before and only “came online” in Ken Wilber’s terms - in recent history. How does stage green or yellow values only come online recently - as if they never existed before lol. It’s called spiral dynamics yet approached as if it’s ladder dynamics in some linear manner. Concern for the environment and marginalized is a recent evolution? Tell that to Jains who’ve been practicing radical non-harm for 2,500 years, or indigenous cultures with sophisticated ecological wisdom embedded in their cosmologies, or mystics who experienced universal divine love. Tell that to every traditional culture that understood humans as embedded in - not separate from - the web of life. Apparently none of that counts because it was wrapped in “mythic” or “magic” worldviews. It only becomes a real developmental stage when white Western baby boomers discovered empathy after dropping acid lol. The model literally takes Western culture’s temporary pathological detour through mechanistic rationalism and calls it a necessary path of evolution for the entire globe. It treats these values as novelties that “emerged” rather than a recovery from lost and found.”

@Jodistrict Brilliant. Came across this: https://x.com/evanwritesonx/status/2002311064713879745?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ “This Epstein case is revealing very naive people who clearly have no idea how the world works. My timeline is full of these people outraged. If you’re outraged over these Epstein files, you should not be engaged in this matter at all. Like, what did you hope to think you would find? Epstein and his friends having a harmless picnic with the children? Do you even understand why such syndicate exists in the first place? What you’re being shown, is probably a FRACTION of how depraved this organization really is. And that’s the point. It had to be as depraved, and as morally reprehensible as possible. Otherwise there’s no point of it existing. If perversion didn’t exist, to the extent where people get sick by it, there would be NO LEVERAGE in the first place. So being shocked by this just outlines you’re the average joe, that you don’t understand power, or how it exerts itself. The system that arrested and eliminated Epstein, is the SAME system that constructed him. Ground up. Epstein was not real. If Epstein was real, this level of network, the depth and breadth, would be impossible to achieve. He was a complete asset construct and nothing was accidental or random. He was positioned as the ultimate connector, enabling leverage and power exertion across every major sector. Tech, finance, media, entertainment, politics, education, health. Extraordinarily high asymmetric leverage through blackmail-adjacent channels and elite facilitation. Complete entanglement within figures from competing factions, whether it’s left/right, US/Israel, old money/new, TIC, FIC, MIC. He literally created a mutual deterrence web, engineering a cross-sector interdependent hostage situation where participation begets silence. Silence that ensured no one could ever defect or expose one another without self-destruction, preserving their own systemic impunity and profit continuity in a finite-game world where alliances are otherwise fragile and transactional. No single player could fully expose any counter faction or even abandon Epstein without risking collateral damage to their own network. That’s why, even post death, the releases remain ever so carefully curated. Epstein was essentially designed to build a private intelligence-insurance scheme for the elites. They got introductions, contracts and deal flows, and plausible deniability; while Epstein got protection and capital. And when the liability finally outweighed the utility, the system shed him cleanly. Suicide narrative sealed. Dead men tell no tales. Estate photos selectively leaked years later as controlled demolition. I don’t know why people are shocked from these photos. What’s hidden and will remain hidden, is far more sickening. By design. This isn’t about normalizing pedophilia. This isn’t about normalizing perversion. The girls were the means. Silent compliance was the end. Depravity was the non-negotiable feature of this syndicate to achieve those ends. The sicker, the more depraved the act, the more leverage it exerted. It wasn’t up for debate. It wasn’t an option. It wasn’t permission. It was mandatory to do the unthinkable. Without the "unthinkable," there's no binding glue strong enough to enforce silence across competing factions. The job description was simple. And they found that one guy called “Epstein”, willing to take it on and glue it all together. Everything, no matter how depraved, has always been permissible in the West. Nothing to be outraged about.”

From: https://x.com/schizo_freq/status/2002828987580522563?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ “The Epstein files game theory is extremely funny Whatever's in there is clearly damaging enough to both sides that they both know it can never ACTUALLY be released unredacted So this means the optimal strategy is for the party who's not in power to troll the shit out of the party in power over releasing them (bc they know they can't actually do it) "wow just wow. The fact you won't release these files means you're complicit in infinite pedophilia. You can tell I'm innocent though, because I'm strongly pushing for them to be released" "Uhhh... Didn't you just sit on this for like 4 years without releasing them too though?" "You are a rapist pedophile, shame on you" They'll probably cycle back and forth like this for another 2-3 election cycles until all the people implicated in the files are dead or irrelevant and then just release the whole thing uncensored to an audience of people who are at this point too bored to care.”

Westerners can’t handle looking in the mirror at their own empire. Everything that counters the notion of their own goodness is scapegoated or obfuscated away to external actors. Every red pill and dose of realism is simply a Russia / Chinese commie talking point. Libs are ideological about not being idealogical - the irony. Geopolitics is a cold game. Conflating the everyday person with what the empire does for its own goals of power preservation and accumulation is what gets people. We should separate the empire state from the nation state - that can help resolve the cognitive dissonance. It also requires cunning and strategy. If that gets to people because it’s “immoral” then this game isn’t for them. @Daniel Balan Put yourself in the shoes as the leader of Europe (with knowledge of all its strengths and weaknesses). What would be the best strategy to get stronger and sovereign (not to be dictated to by the US, China or Russia)? Think of yourself as a Machiavelli with Bhuddist characteristics - a “good” Machiavelli. We obviously need to be economically strong - cheap energy is a key aspect and undercurrent to that. Only ideological fools with no tactfulness would cut themselves off cold turkey from cheap Russian energy without a replacement that allows them to be and remain economically competitive. We now have Merz saying “Pax Americana” is over. Even if correct (mostly) - that doesn’t mean you blurt that out angering the hegemon your security architecture and now energy security depends on. But being strategic and not disclosing all your cards would require being “immoral” and non-straight with our so called ally. It would probably be wiser to maintain good relations with both sides - benefiting from what both have to offer - whilst building your own capacity and stregnth (diversifying energy dependence) and having military sovereignty via internal production. I think Europes been cushioned for decades not having to think about survival pressures or power dynamics thanks to being under the umbrella of a superpower. That’s weakened our very own ability to be strategic and deal with the realities of power dynamics. It’s like being in a cave and all of a sudden going into the light where your eyes aren’t used to it. Europe itself will need to be more cohesive. It’s going to be tested. Is Britain, France or Poland okay with Germany re-militarizing itself with a massive army build out? I’m sure that’s not going to sit so easily with them and will cause historical anxiety. Without the US who leads the command structure? That position will be fought over. US having that position means being their bitch - which Europe wishes it didn’t have to be - but it was and is tolerated because the alternative is facing inter-European rivalry. Europe complains about being the US’s junior partner while quietly fearing a post-US security order even more. This is also why they do everything to keep US in the fight against Russia and come across almost war mongering in affect. They need US invested in Europe to save them from themselves - having to face the reality of survival they are not accustomed to and fear their lack of cohesion would not fair well with if left on their own. The US is obviously exploiting this vulnerability. Their now only giving a measly €800 million in aid to Ukraine (over 2 years) whilst Europe now has to foot he bill into the tune of billions.

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.