zazen

They’re clearing out the shit. Let’s see where the world is in another few decades. Vietnam just joined BRICS:

😂

Mexicans have a sovereign state whilst Palestinians are denied one. —————— New documentary that wasn’t aired by BBC: https://www.ft.com/content/d21fc58c-c482-4818-b960-f6d31555f4bc

@Wilhelm44 Many commentators will have some version of how they think the US will fall. Some will split hairs over whether it’s a fall, or a decline. What is more clearer by the day is the US is in relative decline, and the current tension and intuition amongst many doomer types of WW3 isn’t unfounded either as rising powers challenge its hegemony. We are in the classic Thucydides trap. 75% of cases ended in war. The the current tension being felt but maybe not articulated well.

Wrote this on the other thread (US at war with Iran). I think most likely we are going into a cold peace where the current hegemon (US) will have to reluctantly accepts its position in the new world. The real war is the US being at war for its own primacy in the world - it will still be a superpower, but not THE superpower ie reign supreme over the world. Both the empire and capital elites should conclude that it’s better to be relatively powerful than the only power in town - which risks WW3 to maintain by force. The only wild cards are the fanatical ideologues (neocons) of empire that don’t care for cost benefit analysis and will even risk capital interests OR a empire no longer constrained by capital logic if a systemic collapse erodes the capital elites. It seems more likely there will be domestic civil unrest (not total civil war) than WW3 - which will be a sort of indirect Cold War through trade, tech and propaganda. If or when the US cracks financially is when things will most likely spark (but not explode) - during that time people will be ripe for heroes and saviours to rally around that provide some sort of unified myth and meaning. That would be the moment for ideologues to hijack the state apparatus which has more recently been driven by empire and capital logic, not so much prophetic (fanatic) logic. Depending on who steers the ship, they may want to re-assert imperial empire abroad through force (WW3) but domestically there will be friction against this - as there won’t be consensus over the new prophet / hero / ideological narrative. US will be a place of competing ideologies like today, but heightened, hence the civil unrest. It’s a militarised, armed and polarized society that lacks trust in institutions or a shared narrative (Christian nationalism vs secular liberalism).

Like I said earlier - you can’t print industrial capacity. This is why WW3 fears are overblown. This is also why the US just shit bombed a mountain in Iran and claimed victory - to maintain an image of primacy in a world their actually losing their position of primacy in. Hegseth even acknowledged in an interview that the US lost against China in simulated war games. The US empire may be arrogant but it isn’t suicidal. They definitely don’t want to find out what China’s capable of first hand: “China’s development of a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) paired with a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) represents a major leap in military capability, as it allows a missile to be launched into low Earth orbit, travel partially around the globe, and then release a maneuverable warhead that reenters the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds—making it nearly impossible for current U.S. missile defense systems to detect, track, or intercept. This means China could theoretically strike any point on Earth from any direction, including over the South Pole, bypassing America’s northern-focused early warning systems. The system’s unpredictability, global reach, and speed mark a significant challenge to U.S. strategic deterrence, signaling that China may be ahead in certain advanced weapons technologies. It’s developments like this that likely fuel proposals such as Trump’s rumored “Golden Dome”—an ambitious, costly plan to create a next-generation missile defense shield to protect the entire U.S. from threats like this.”

News from today:

I agree. Before I was looking at the driving force of the state from the lens of capital - after this professors videos I would conclude that there is also a empire logic at play in driving the state - though they usually work in conjunction. This professor over-weights the logic of empire wanting to maintain primacy, against the logic of capital wanting to maintain stable profits. A framework I've come to is that there are 4 pillars / domains that make up power: - People ( Nation state, the masses seeking the good life) Offer empire and capital legitimacy. - Primacy ( Empire state, the muscle seeking primacy on the world stage ) National security / deep state military elites ie NSA, CIA, FBI - Profit ( Capital-cloud estate, money seeking profits ) Wall Street / tech elites ie Blackrock, Big Tech - Prophecy ( Religious or secular, ideology seeking meaning ) Moral cover / justification weaponised by empire and capital. Empire's primacy and capital's profits are served at the expense of the nation states people - hence as you said ''people started noticing that their politicians aren’t listening to anything they say anymore'' and so we have the rise of populism across the West. The ideological buy in for empire behaving imperially (American exceptionalism) and capital behaving extractively (Capitalism) no longer hold meaning for most people. Foreign policy is written in board rooms (capital) and war rooms (empire), and later justified in newsrooms (ideology). Social media is shredding the narrative control of empire and capital - who are then losing legitimacy among their own masses, let alone those it has already dominated abroad. The way capital and empire work together is that capital profits from access (to markets, regions, resources) whilst empire (muscle-military dominance) ensures favourable access (SWIFT, petro-dollar primacy). Capital runs on empires guardrails. Capital plays on the gameboard that empire has built for it - to be in a position of primacy from which it can be extractive. Empire fires shots so that capital can call the shots. This has been the status quo for the past decades during pax-Americana. That status quo is now changing with the rise of peer rivals and a new game board being constructed by the likes of China, Russia, Iran (BRICS etc). So primacy and uni-polar hegemony is threatened, and with it, the position of primacy from which capital could dictate terms to favor itself and extract from others as predator rather than partner. Capital wealth is denominated in dollars and dependent on market access - both of which are threatened by those who want to de-dollarize by trading in local currencies and make access conditional. Up to now, Empire muscle has been enforcing and tilting the game board in its favor in much of the world, by enforcing or coercing access for its capital elites (corporations, hedge/vulture funds). But now they are up against the last man standing in the Middle East who has historically denied them access (nationalization of oil followed by a CIA backed coup) and continues to do so: Iran. Luckily, Iran is a proud civilisational state that is a geographic fortress, overlooks strategic choke points and has enough muscle to deter aggression - unlike its neighbors who have been de-stabilized and subjugated to the empire. It’s also co-architecting the new game board being built by China and Russia which de-dollarizes trade and calls for sovereignty over subjugation. So the tension arises between empire and capital - empire says ''we can't lose out to the new game in town'' whilst capital says ''but this could risk annihilation or exclusion from the game entirely - disrupting everything we've built''. Empire wants to strong arm the last defiant example in the Middle East to concede to its terms and not engage in building a new game (with BRICS) that disrupts the game they dominate in. Capital wants to deal make partial access even if it means concessions their arrogance isn't used to - rather than risk total exclusion or annihilation ie game over. They see a negotiated partial access under multi-polarity as a game still worth playing, over a total extractive access that risks ending the game entirely. The reality is that empire has met its match in muscle whilst losing its narrative control over the masses it needs to sell their actions to. Any wrong moves at this stage expedite its decline from within (people uprising against empire - populism) and from without (nations banding together against imperial belligerence) as we've already see happening with Trumps tariff game which is just another mechanism of attempting to maintain primacy by offsetting the costs of empire. What is most likely to happen is a slow decline in relative power against new powers rising in a multi-polar world, and the US empire and capital elites learning to come to terms with not being the ones to always set the terms in the new world.

That's the hard part with these chants - not knowing what the person chanting thinks. If it's a Western liberal saying ''from the river to the sea'' it could mean democracy and freedom in terms of equal rights (self-determination included), if its a Palestinian it could mean liberation that could be in the form of two states or a single one, which further splinters into: are Israeli's expelled from the state or included in it. But like you said, we get into rationalizing the meaning behind the meaning behind - but everyone has different meanings and definitions. And that's another issue with protest slogans - they have to be short and punchy which means they inevitably lead to misunderstanding and confusion unlike a well thought out article or essay. I think what's getting to a lot of people is that more of a fuss is being made about these slogans (which should be dealt with as they incite violence/hatred) instead of stopping the actual actions of the IDF which have a state behind them that speaks in genocidal ways. Yea these people were in a rave and dance/rave that way regardless of the song or slogan. This slogan is now being done by street protesters in Australia: I think it just shows how much anger Israel has stirred up by its actions which ironically makes Jews less safe as there are people out there who conflate what the state of Israel does with Jewish people as a whole.

Chanting death to anyone or thing is always going to be seen as provocative and crossing a line. At the same time “death to” is usually symbolic shorthand for ending the violence that X group causes. Same way Iran says death to America and Israel - the empire intervening and occupying the region, not the nation itself or its people. There’s a difference between chanting death to the KKK vs Americans, or death to the Nazi’s vs the Germans, similarly death to the IDF (the group causing suffering to Palestinians) vs Israelis (who aren’t directly doing so). Below we have chants shouting death to Arabs as a whole - which is starkly different;

Israel fatigue is real. Even PBD clowns getting hot and bothered with each other over it: NYC’s mayor winning: UK’s largest music festival (Coachella) streamed on UK’s main BBC had one singer get the crowd chanting “death death to the IDF”:

https://www.politico.eu/article/iran-ban-iaea-chief-rafael-grossi-surveillance-camera-nuclear-plant/

I guess the tricky part is establishing intent. Let’s say you want to target a criminal amongst a crowd of innocent people - a sniper would be precise, a shotgun less precise due to bullet spray, a rocket launcher way less precise. At each level you can say “my intent isn’t to kill innocents but the criminal” - but at the same time there is no intent to avoid civilian death either. It’s like lighting a candle on a bookshelf with a flamethrower - the intent isn’t to set the bookshelf on fire but that happens regardless because of the method chosen to light the candle. There are Israelis who aren’t intent on killing civilians and take caution, there are others who take less caution to none at all, and then there are others who are intent on killing civilians - which are the evil ones. We have heard clear intent to go after civilians and that there are no innocents. The clearest case of collective punishment is blockading the place of aid, turning off electricity, water etc. Like you said, whatever its called: genocide, ethnic cleansing etc - it’s horrific either way. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-ordered-to-shoot-deliberately-at-unarmed-gazans-waiting-for-humanitarian-aid/00000197-ad8e-de01-a39f-ffbe33780000

Def doesn’t seem to be going after views, guy doesn’t even have a profile pic lol but many doomer videos are with click bait titles and thumbnails. Peoples intuition of WW3 isn’t misplaced but I think there are structural constraints that will hold back any type of hot war between major powers. He understands the state of things well, but is overconfident in things getting kinetic towards annihilation. He’s opened my eyes to the fact that empire has its own logic compared to capital - which I put more weight on driving things. I overlooked empire and would view things from the POV that the financial elite are the main drivers. A helpful way to break it down is: There are twin brothers in the game, each represent a different faction of elites that can be lumped under: - empire (national security elite, military industrial complex, CIA/NSA, deep state) - capital (financial tech elite, consumer industrial complex, hedge funds and Blackrock) Empire elites seek a position of primacy on the world stage - to maintain unipolarity. The capital elites play within this system that is rigged in their favour. Capital funds and profits from empire while empire protects and expands itself. Empire is financialized, capital is militarized : they are distinct but mostly aligned and interdependent. Empire is the muscle that enforces a game board in its favour, capital plays to dominate others on that game board. Capital can only influence players but can’t enforce players into positions the way the military muscle of empire can. During peace time for empire, where there is no clear challenger, capital expands and looks to be the only player dictating things - but empire and statecraft makes itself more overt when the system that capital depends on is threatened. If there is a new game in town (BRICS+) that’s attracting other players to it and threatening the old game, tension arises between the brothers. The split is between how they respond to this threat: primacy vs profit. Empire says we need to flip the new game board over (contain or destroy it), whilst capital says why not play on that game board too - “It won’t be rigged in their favour, but it’s better to have partial access to some new riches than have no new riches at all” because you destroyed it through war, or got denied access for being a belligerent. So primacy is now being threatened (dollar system + trade): empire wants to maintain it whilst capital wants to make a deal with the new game. Capital is more exposed to global markets and so is more risk averse, seeking compromise whilst empire seeks confrontation. Capital brother is less loyal than the empire brother who seeks legacy and heritage. Capital bro can marry out the family and threaten it because capital is free flowing, liquid - can move to new games boards to play on and profit from. Capital wandering off to play new games (BRICS) weakens the board game that empire built for it. Empire seeks monopoly, capital seeks margin. During unipolarity, the Empire doesn’t need to act like an empire overtly. With the emergence of rivals, grand strategy and statecraft of empire re-emerges to enforce the board game. ——- There are three levels to look at it from. The: - nation state (national interest, people) - empire state (geostrategic interest, primacy/power) - capital-cloud estate (profit interest, finance/tech) The nation is heavily neglected for empire and capital. But once the nation has been hollowed out to such a degree it can threaten empire itself via populism. Financialization and empire marginalise and then radicalise the nation towards populism. Empire needs legitimacy of the people to fight for it. Think of empire as muscle (enforces), capital as blood (flows), nation as heart (soul of the people). With the above in mind, the main factors why a hot kinetic war won’t take place are due to: - mutually assured destruction between nuclear powers - no public buy in for empire wars, narrative collapse of legacy media now challenged by social media - muscles are looking rusty and showing up weak against asymmetric warfare (Houthis as a example) = less confident to go up against main rivals This is where I agree with the professor that Iran was a target. It’s the last player in a geo-strategically critical region, that was defiant of Western empire/capital and within the new games orbit - BRICS. It’s co-building the new game board (de-dollarization, bypassing swift) that threatens the old game. Empire thinks it can threaten Iran into submission, to play on their board, and on their terms. The muscle of empire is like a wrench cracking open resistant nations (Iran) for capital to extract from. But Iran is no walkover compared to their neighbours. The gulf are culturally and spiritually more aligned to the Global South but were already plugged into the old game by pegging their resources (oil) to empires currency (dollar). The gulf simply don’t have the muscle to deter any consequences of defecting to the new game being built, which is actually more geographically proximate to themselves and just makes sense to be a part of. This makes the gulf transitional players hedging their bets - playing both sides. People conflate being rich in capital with being a powerful empire. The gulf states are a clear example of being a capital estate (not empire) that are under the US empire who they’ve outsourced their security to (muscle). Without security there is no true sovereignty or empire. They can only influence with capital which they have plenty of, but can never enforce anything imperially nor protect themselves (their resources) from imperialism itself. This is why they will never be among the great powers which require both money and money. China seems to have struck a good (but not perfect) balance between the three layers: nation state, empire state (not necessarily imperial, but influential) and capital-cloud estate. They are attempting to serve the interest of all three harmoniously. This is why they will eclipse the US - because they have strong muscle (military), blood (capital) and heart (people). The body is holistically healthier and robust. Russia is lopsided in this regard - not serving the nation state (people) but the empire state and capital estate of oligarchs.

Check out what this professor predicts in the 1st min, unreal: At the 37min mark he explains exactly what’s occurring now and why, with regard to Iran. The whole thing is worth a listen and very insightful. Blown away and will need to process it.

@BlueOak Agree, boots on the ground would be a catastrophe. Irans one of the hardest geographies to penetrate - place is like a fortress. The troops would get encircled like Kursk, and supply lines don’t exist by land which only leaves air drops that can be hit down by launchers from the mountains. And those are hard to spot in that terrain, similar to Afghanistan. That’s why Iraq and Syria are different (flat lands) and why hubris to take on Iran thinking they did those two next door is folly. Yet, regime change remains the main aim. They can’t de-nuke the country which has the technical know how - knowledge can’t be bombed away - only intimidated to not act upon that knowledge. But that only cements the idea that must go for the nukes in order to deter. I think that’s why they choose regime change as the path. One that is in line with Western terms ie who doesn’t pursue nuclear and opens access to resources for western corps. Even the operation name itself “rising lion” is in reference to Iran before the revolution where the lion was the national symbol during the Shahs who ruled - and who they want back in power. Israel can only do a short intense fight with Iran - shock and awe style the way the US has been perfecting. If it becomes a war of attrition - Iran can bleed out Israel. The interceptors cost many times more than the missiles Iran fires - the math simply don’t math. Also, Israel is small and has a population not hardened to suffer the same way Iran does. Iranians can move around and away from urban centre being hit - way more space to move than Israelis can who go into bunkers. Any gaps or pressure points Israel has (economic-military) will of course be filled by the US or the West - but domestically the West don’t want to give up resources to a ethno apartheid state that’s ethnically cleansing others and has defied all kinds of norms - whether in international law or in their immoral treatment against Palestinians. Americans don’t want to work two jobs and draw blood for a country they subsidise that has healthcare and gets yearly aid with little string attached - these conversations are circulating en mass and across political aisles now. The pressure is on. Enjoying this professor going viral. Iv been saying for a while how asymmetric warfare is blunting the power of legacy military systems and empire itself. US couldn’t defeat the Houthis but think they can defeat Iran lol If there is a pause between conflict I’m sure Iran will procure Russian/Chinese air defence systems to tighten their weak point which was made clear this round. They will also surely be going after a nuke now to deter a hot war in the future - compared to this which was like warm. A strong airforce would also be good but that takes time and training.

Great noticing

These are the kind of psychotic thugs within Western institutions that not only provide Israel the impunity they have, but encourage vile behaviour. Policy director for the United Against Nuclear Iran non profit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Against_Nuclear_Iran Link: https://x.com/jasonmbrodsky/status/1937229409036951649?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ

This is what I mean by survival logic distorting our morality to do things we wouldn’t want to in normal circumstances. But with empire logic we suspend or suppresses our morality out of a cold calculation for dominance and empire. The problem is you are holding morality as an absolute. It is flexible and fluid like anything else. You are going to get tainted in this world whether you like it or not. Not so you better now hold your legos too tightly. You will need to collapse the construction and build again.

Great write up. I commented in another thread and your points tie in well with what I wrote. I was writing about how morality is hijacked by circumstances, your writing about how identity is hijacked by morality itself, especially moral outrage driven wild in the digital age. We can have moral clarity ( as you said we can be spot on in analysis ) but problems arise when we make it our identity. Some people may have the same moral positions as each other but may arrive at them differently - one by being a NCP jumping on a trend to feel identified with something (many activists), another through critical thinking and having moral clarity on a issue. Our moral judgment of actors is how we wish the world to be (idealism - Jeffrey Sachs pov) , our understanding of why they act the way they do is how the world is (realism - John Mearsheimers pov). We can understand power as it is, without surrendering our principles about how it should be wielded. Principles are the souls universal morality - power is the worlds conditioned, contextual reality. I think that deep down we have a universal morality, a soul morality (fitrah in Islam, Dao or bhudda nature, telos in Christianity). Its pre-duality, pre-political, pre-cultural and conditional. But then the world of duality means we must contend with circumstances and conditions that distort, suppress or invert our access to that soul morality (which I generally map in the below comment). That's why religion and spirituality usually refers to revelation or a home coming - in the sense that we have good in us that we need returning to, or revealing of.

I agree - but this can easily become philosophical bypassing as @Inliytened1 said. It can paralyze us into in-action if we abstract completely away from the surface because we make things too broad to tackle. Taken to the extreme we could just say ''God did it as he started this whole thing'' - but it's not pragmatic or helpful. That's one issue with the spiritual non-dual community. The non-dual world may bring peace, but it doesn't bring us protection from the dual world we live in. Non-duality transcends good, bad and evil but doesn't negate them in our dual experience which we have to contend with. I was talking about power because you previously mentioned how war is war - meaning any use of power needed to ensure survival is justified. I was trying to explain that there's a line where survival logic (deterrent based) becomes empire logic (domination based) - and how that extends to politics. The right wing emphasizes power and accumulating more (capitalism) while the left wing emphasizes principles and morality through equality (socialism). We can't just succumb to our use of power without any principles (war is war, might makes right). That's been the core tension in human history: between power (to survive, dominate and accumulate) and principle (to thrive, dignify and guide power with meaning and morality). I wasn't giving a pass or justifying - only understanding. The same way Zionists want people to understand why Israel is acting the way it is - which I also outlined. That's why I said Nazism and ISIS are Evil - they completely invert morality. Evil is literally Live spelled backwards (inverted). Devil spelled backwards is lived - the opposite of that which lived. That's why in Satanism everything is about inversion. Moral distortion (due to survival pressures) or moral suppression-disengagement (due to cold calculations for domination and empire) can still do harm - but moral inversion literally calls that harm good or sacred, it makes domination righteous. Like you said, Israel has a tyrant like Bibi who is hell bent on domination - he suppresses morality for empire. But Israel also has fanatical and puritanical elements such as Ben Gvir or Smotrich who are much more ideological. The idea of Zionism started with survival based morality (we need a safe place to live) - it became distorted once they had to confront people living there already. Self-determination is moral clarity, self-determination at the expense of others is moral distortion - which requires the suppression of morality in order to dominate that reality into existence. This also had and still has elements of ideological fanatics who view domination as righteous - the kahanist and messianic Zionists. That's where morality gets inverted similar to Nazism and ISIS. Hence why Zionism isn’t a monolith and there are different interpretations and manifestations of it.

I’m based in UK and from a mixed background. I have critically thought about the situation, and have come to conclusions as to who’s the most de-stabilising force in the world that’s causing death and destruction. It’s not bias to point that out, just clarity - and I don’t have any cognitive dissonance doing so as I don’t identify with any nation, religion or people. Heres how I make sense of it all: If we lived at the time of the British Empire or during the Holocaust - would it be okay for people to just say “well that’s power isn’t it, that’s how the world and geopolitics works, it’s not about morals”. The point is we are humans, not robots. On some level we have a sense of right and wrong which stems from the soul. But then how do we explain why people do wrong yet don’t feel it to be wrong? I think what happens is that peoples moral compasses get hijacked due to external circumstance, but that doesn’t make it an internal condition which is a racist or essentialist claim. Context (circumstances) distort, suppress or invert our conscience (morality). Germans turning around from Nazism shows that context > innateness. Nazism was a perfect shit storm of contextual forces that hijacked human morality on a mass scale leading to the worst atrocities. Moral distortion is psychological-survival based, moral suppression is empire-domination based, moral inversion is ideological-puritanical based. Resistance groups belong to the first category (localised geopolitical struggle), Zionism is mainly a mix of the first two (started with geopolitical survival but became dominating), US nuking Japan and doing all they’ve done till today is mainly moral suppression (morality suspended for the cold calculus of empire), Nazism and ISIS are the last two (global domination to purify the world - apocalyptic politics not just geopolitics) in other words: evil. Distorted morality is survival logic (liberation), suppressed morality is empire logic (domination), inverted morality is purity logic (evil). Israel right now seems to be locked into a distorted feedback loop of (past) trauma justifying (present) domination. The context today is that they have power that is distorted by paranoia, rooted from a time in which they lacked any power to survive. Their moral compass is hijacked by a permanent sense of threat that has been heightened beyond what it really is due to past trauma. And despite being materially developed (powerful) they are morally compromised (in principles). This is the key tension that causes a lot of confusion (even politically between left and right). To defer to power (conserve to survive - quality and might make right) or to defer to principle (liberate to thrive - equality and fairness are rights). These need to be synthesised. The lefts blind spot is to deny the reality of survival and power dynamics because it counters their own idea of human goodness. The rights blindspot is to just succumb to raw power dynamics without principles to buffer and refine power itself. The realities of survival and power threatens the lefts moral framework because they haven’t synthesized the ideals of principles - with the realities of power and survival. They either deny those realities or have an incorrect relationship to it - viewing hierarchy and power as bad ie communism being the extreme political manifestation. The right succumb to power dynamics with little to no moral framework - only justifying power as principle itself, with facism being their extreme political manifestation on the other end of the spectrum. The bottom line is that the physical nature of power isn’t good by default - the concept of good doesn’t even exist in that plane. It’s just raw and neutral - and only becomes good when nurtured by principles from the non-physical plane of the soul. We are both ruled (down to earth) by power and pulled (up to heaven) by principles. Civilization is about buffering the reality of power with the conscience of principles - or them finally coming together.

By that logic, anyone who ‘’starts something’’ opens the door for any response, by any means necessary. Applied universally: the US overthrew Iran’s government in 1953, invaded Iraq, bombed Libya, occupied Afghanistan, backed coups and funded militants - does that mean any group that views itself as wronged now has license to do whatever it takes to end the threat? If so, that’s justifying Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and every suicide bombing framed as retaliation. If “whatever means necessary’’ is valid when you feel existentially threatened, then it’s valid for everyone. You can’t excuse away disproportionate violence like nukes on Japan for example “listen to yourself bro”. The US wasn’t even under any threat when they dropped them. It wasn’t for protection but to project power.