zazen

@Nivsch @hundreth The discussion Raze - Leo - Karmadhi were having was about the moral development of Israelis vs Palestinians / Hamas, which I jumped in on. That's the point of raising those polls - to indicate something about that development. Hundreth, you say ''majority doesn't mean you can do whatever you want'' but the fact is it is being done but just in a slower manner. Past Israeli PM's are now coming out (Olmert) saying that Israel is committing war crimes: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/27/former-israeli-pm-ehud-olmert-says-his-country-is-committing-war-crimes '“Recent operations in Gaza have nothing to do with legitimate war goals,” he wrote. “This is now a private political war. Its immediate result is the transformation of Gaza into a humanitarian disaster area.” Olmert said he had often asserted that Israel was not committing war crimes in Gaza and claimed with conviction that “in no case did a government official give orders to hit Gazan civilians indiscriminately”. However, in recent weeks, “I’ve been no longer able to do so,” he said. “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy – knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.” The polls - whether true or good enough to go by or not - show that it isn't just a issue that can be scapegoated to Bibi or the far right, as disturbing views are held widely. If Bibi is out of power, theres many that can take his place and continue on the same devastation. These polls were also not taken in the aftermath of October 7th when the population was full of rage, but many many months later when there should have been some what cooler heads.

Great powers don’t just react to what other nations choose - they react to what those choices imply. Saying NATO expansion isn’t a cause because it’s voluntary is like saying someone who steps into traffic can’t be hit - because they weren’t pushed. But its true that this can become a negative feedback loop. NATO grows because Russia is a threat = Russia sees NATO growth and feels more threatened = Russia responds militarily, which justifies further NATO growth. The Western narrative though only see it as the West reacting and Russia always aggressing. Its not like NATO is a kids club that is being joined, its a ''defensive'' pact that isn't always defensive, and who's main leader the US definitely doesn't only ever act in defense but acts to dominate. And this cute club wants to sit at your border - no sensible nation will allow that. NATO expanded eastward despite Russian protesting it since the 1990s. International law is an abstraction designed for peace, but national security is a reality shaped by fear. The problem is that Russia broke international law, yes - but in response to a provocation that international law refuses to recognize. And survival always overrides legality. I discussed this tension with Chat GPT and it came to conclude that international law needs to evolve to: - Include a doctrine of “preventive existential defense” with strict thresholds - Create mechanisms for international adjudication before escalation - Acknowledge that survival is not optional, and law that ignores this will always be broken A law that cannot incorporate survival will always be subordinate to it. If international law refuses to recognize existential threats as valid motives, it will remain moral in theory, but irrelevant in practice.'' I was confused myself about this because I argue that Israel is clearly against international law and that Palestinians have a right to self-determination - but then I understand Russia's point of view and action - though it goes against international law. So I was conflicted with that contradiction and that's how I gained some clarity on it. Interesting food for thought. Also just a side point about the fear and motivation of Russia wanting to expand and take Europe - its very rare for a empire or country to expand when it is demographically weak and in decline. Usually empires only do so when they have a large number of young men to do so with - so that fear is unfounded. And if Putin was planning to take all of Europe then he's a mad man lol

@Daniel Balan Yeah, its a tricky one as that process of being more liberal needs to come more organically from the ground up. Leo is spot on below where he speaks on what you fear - which is the rise of right wing facism/nationalism. I think there is one advantage Europe has though which is its silver lining - I'll comment below. If economic disenfranchisement is the dry timber for the fire of facism - then to keep facism at bay requires economic inclusion. The reason facism is rising in USA despite the USA leading in technology (and economically) is because the gains made by technology aren't re-distributed across the society but are instead accumulated at the top. Unlike the US where redistribution is viewed with suspicion and the state is expected to step back, Europe is much more culturally comfortable with the idea that the state has a moral role. If the EU can catch up in innovation while using its already existing mechanisms to equitably distribute the benefits, it would preserve and even enhance what it’s best known for which is a high quality of life. The US excels at creating wealth but fails at sharing it. The EU shares better but struggles to generate as much. China forces the balance through command and control - which is why they are going to win the future and why the US is panicking now.

Yeah that's a good balance. The thing is one policy may be good for one country while not so good for another as each country has different strengths and weaknesses. Germany who has a low unemployment rate vs Spain who has a very high one will naturally differ on what policies would suit them. Spain and Greece have higher youth unemployment than Mongolia and some African countries - they naturally would need a different approach and to use different tools but don't have the autonomy for it within the EU. That was the traditional tension in the EU - between Northern taxpayer countries vs Southern debtors countries - with blame games over who is lazy etc. But now there's also a tension between the East and West which is more political / cultural. rather than economic. The supranational entity (EU) wants to impose more liberal values on more conservative nations in the East. You ask if your relatives are being truthful about Germany's de-industrialization, you should google it and check the many articles tracking it. What made the EU work post WW2 was that it was a empire of access - to cheap energy from the East and to the largest consumer market in the West (US). It was the bridge, but that bride is crumbling from both ends. Russian energy is offline which drives energy costs up = less industry = less competitiveness. And the US is leaning into the tariff game making good less competitive to sell to the largest consumer market. That input - output equation has been disrupted. Which requires adaptability = which internal bureaucracy, fragmented political will, and overregulation get in the way of. Europe is anchored in its past, paralyzed in its present, and becoming irrelevant to the future - it needs to do something real quick. The EU's institutions are designed to prevent war and constrain power, not to project innovation or agility. It celebrates historical achievements and moral postures, but struggles to let go of outdated frameworks. Too much memory and inertia, not enough momentum and inovation. Future power and prosperity will be decided by technology - they need to double, triple, 10x down on it like yesterday. Only innovations can help plug the gaps it has.

You're calling for centrism, but not practicing it. Centrism is about seeing things from both sides, weighing trade offs, and acknowledging complexity - not emotionally dismissing one side because FUCK the right wingers lol Just because Leo has called out green ambitions being too utopian you have now come to your senses? Or what about what nerdspeak has said above which I commented similar to on the previous page ie that a stronger nations like Germany-France dominate the policies of the EU which may not be in the interest of other individual nations. You yourself are confused about whether EU policies are good or bad. The complexity is that there's a tension between national interest vs supranational interest. But you dismiss any kind of national interest as right wing nazism because your a emotional snowflake liberal.

@Leo Gura If someone pins you down and you try scratching their eyes out - are you morally inferior? Context matters. Desperate acts should be contextualized rather than pathologized as moral inferiority of a group. I would definetely say ISIS are morally inferior to Hamas because they have global aspirations of domination with ideological purity driving them - fanatically violent. Hamas meanwhile are in a localized geopolitical struggle with aspirations of liberation - contextually violent. What contextual excuse did the US have to nuke two civilian cities when it didn’t have to?

Aren’t they the only country to not only use nukes once but twice - when they didn’t even have to and definetely weren’t backed into any corner? All the way in Japan who was by many accounts already on the brink of surrender - and on the civilian filled cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If moral development is defined by restraint of power then they have failed. Pakistan have nukes and are almost similar to Palestinians in terms of sharing the same Sunni Islam belief system, dealing with internal fanaticism, and being in a tense neighbourhood (India-Pakistan). Pakistan is also very low on material development and hasn’t yet used its nukes despite being gaslit as a terrorist state post 9/11. Like you said - desperate people do desperate things. But you’re conflating desperation with depravity. And conflating suicidality with morality - without looking at the structural causes. Suicide bombings are obviously horrific but are acts of desperation in asymmetric warfare - typically by stateless, oppressed populations who lack conventional means. Resistance from the oppressed (even when ugly) isn’t equivalent to domination from the powerful. Suicidal acts are a reflection of hopelessness, not moral inferiority. Japan and South Korea are rich nations with high suicide rates - a signal of hopelessness at a societal level, not moral inferiority.

To avoid diluting the thread or getting lengthy I'll stick to the main point. Yes, Israel must be held accountable. But how? And who is an obstruction to that accountability? Israel doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Its impunity is structurally enabled - militarily, diplomatically, economically - by the US. That’s why international mechanisms like the UN can’t enforce accountability: because the US vetoes it. Even the ICJ was threatened by the US. So when you rightfully call for holding the main actors accountable, there is a nation above all that gets in the way of the mechanisms that are supposed to do so. Other nations are too afraid to act not just due to geopolitical calculations, but because the US has weaponized global systems (SWIFT, sanctions, NATO pressure, military bases, IMF leverage). That fear is not theoretical, but deeply embedded in the system. The US is functionally a main party involved in this, they aren't peripheral. Holding Israel accountable means holding the system that enables them accountable - and that system is upheld by the US.

@Raze @Twentyfirst Leo says the issue requires extreme nuance- yet denies this nuance to the Palestinians, or in applying it to development and civilization. According to Leo there is a form of civilized evil. By that logic there is a civilized way of ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, apartheid, starvation, and ultimately genocide. I wrote two pages back that there's a difference between horizontal (material) and vertical (moral) development - a distinction which is important here. It's possible that you can have skyscrapers yet be spiritually bankrupt. Just like the Nazi's who were one of the most literate, industrialized societies - yet immoral. Of course anyone would rather live in Israel over Gaza - that doesn't prove that such a place is more moral, only that it is more powerful. The horizontal plane of development and civilization involves - material, nature, power. The vertical plane of development and civilization involves - morals, nurture, principles. To be truly civilized isn't just to be developed horizontally, materially - to amass power, and default to our animal nature where might makes right. It's also to be developed vertically, morally - to nurture our nature, to buffer power with principles. The crux of civilization is to buffer power with principle, to nurture nature, to bring the vertical depth of morality to the horizontal surface of the material. We are not just a human animal but have a humanity in us. Perhaps this distinction and nuance isn't afforded because it challenges spiral dynamics orthodoxy that the West are ahead in the development game - that it is solely defined by and lead by them. Westerners want to keep that mythos intact by avoiding the complexity of reality - but will gladly bring that complexity to obfuscate and explain away their own actions. Old but gold:

The thing is most countries don't differ on ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, apartheid, starvation, and ultimately genocide - being morally wrong. There is no moral ambiguity to this situation which is why so much of the world has a stance on it - and so many feel confident enough to debate this with ardent Zionists despite not knowing every single detail. This is reflected in countless UN resolutions where US-Israel and a handful of micro-states stand as pariah states against the world community. There are also countries who obviously abstain to avoid any consequence - but majority of the world has a consensus on this that's not in favor of Israel. https://unwatch.org/2024-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-of-the-world/ Thanks for the compliment man. I'd like to think I do enough critical thinking before commenting - I also don't identify with any country, ideology, political party or religion. The point of critical thinking is to reach a conclusion after examining all variables, actors, and power structures - and I have reached that conclusion. The weight of evidence, history, and global influence clearly points to the West’s central role in many crises. Once you've critically assessed the global system and identified the most consistent enabler of violence, destabilization, and injustice - in this case, the US - it’s not bias to focus on it. It’s efficiency and prioritization. The fact that other countries can't take tangible steps despite taking symbolic ones to stop Israel - shows that US is effectively and structurally dominant. They are the central node in the international system - with their power eroding but not yet eclipsed. This is where I have applied systemic thinking to come to my conclusion - rather than remaining eternally analytical spinning my wheels - we have to follow the structure of a problem to its root. The US is regionally strong by land ( Europe, Middle East, East Asia ) with bases, alliances and security dependencies, globally strong by sea effectively acting as the worlds maritime police, and structurally strong through economic and political institutions. They police the world in this manner - diplomatically, politically and economically - instead of just with blatant boots on the ground. Anyone who opposes this order invites a lot of disproportionate retaliation that won't be in their favor. That's changing as you've mentioned, but it's structural strength is still systematically embedded even though parallel structures are being built (BRICS+) and expedited by the US's very own actions at clinging to its primacy. The US still controls global financial infrastructure (SWIFT etc) and has 700 bases. It vetoes UN resolutions that would otherwise restrain Israel or hold it accountable. They aren't simply a vendor supplying arms to Israel but support Israel in every domain possible. As I've mentioned above, the US isn't simply a vendor to Israel. Their the geopolitical scaffold that holds Israel up - a structural support system that allows Israel to lay its bricks however it chooses, which is to pave over Palestinian land and settle it. The US sits at nearly every level of that pyramid and causal chain you outlined. The US's own actions in the Middle East prompt a level of hatred towards the West and by extension Israel - that constantly make it feel fearful. Israel is too far gone into historical trauma, paranoia, and a worldview where dominance equals security. So we appeal to the actor that enables and empowers that madness, because it may still have the capacity for restraint. If you want to get to the root of the hostilities its this: Zionism in its current form demands total dominance to feel safe, but total dominance ensures they never will feel safe as it’s at the expense of others. Zionists can’t seek safety of one people (themselves) by displacing another (Palestinians) in the most violent manner. I agree everyone should work on themselves internally - but Palestinians are not in the position to "self-actualize" when they’re denied basic rights, including the right to self determination that the world and international law tells them is theirs. Also, Palestinians don't need moral perfection before they can get political liberation. When the diplomatic avenue to their right is denied (ie US veto) and they take a undiplomatic violent one instead - their gaslit as backwards regressive terrorists. When the West or Israel acts bad its framed as a ''reaction'' to trauma, when non-Westerners act bad its regressive and pathologized as inherent. This is how the Western narrative maintains its image - nuance and context is afforded to themselves and their allies but not to others. There are hard limits to agency and accountability - there are things not in your power, but that are imposed by powers bigger than you. Telling a stateless, besieged population to “take accountability” while absolving the empire that funds, arms, and protects their oppressor is like telling someone pinned under rubble that they should’ve chosen a better place to stand. This isn't me failing to apply systems thinking. It's me following the system all the way to its source of leverage - which in the case of Israel-Palestine, is the US. If Israel is unreachable and unreasonable due to trauma, paranoia, and impunity - then only the US can pull the brake.

Not all peels are Western but a lot are imported by the CIA (regime change / coups), subsidized by the IMF (austerity / privatisation) and guarded by NATO (enforcement of a favourable “rules” based order). The West can’t be blamed for everything but it sure has intervened in pretty much everything. It can’t insist on being the worlds police and bank, then be surprised when people look to why there’s chaos and debt. Back to Israel’s moral development. Another day another atrocity: Haunting. Humanity has failed. More broadly the humanity at the level of the US state. While Spain halting arms exports to Israel and hosting a gathering are symbolic - they won’t have the practical effect of stopping Israel’s onslaught when majority of their arms comes from the US (65%) and Germany (30%). Almost the only way to stop Israel committing atrocities like above is to stop the arms used for them. Diplomatic pressure has no effect as they embrace the identity of being the victim even further as the world “gangs” up on them, furthering their resolve and reinforcing their paranoid aloneness in a “anti-Semitic” world. Germany wouldn’t halt their large share of arms due to Holocaust guilt. So it falls squarely on the US - which is why they are synonymously hated by so many. Muslim nations are either too weak or are dependent client states in practice - as their security is guaranteed by the US (Gulf, Egypt, Jordan). China prefers stability over confrontation. Europe has Holocaust guilt, is geopolitically timid and under the armpit of the US security umbrella. Turkey is a NATO member. Only the US has the leverage to stop Israel in any material way, but chooses not to. What’s that about moral development?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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