zazen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a journalist:

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

Could just be words to insulate them from the fallout:

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

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

@Nivsch Yes and segments of the West, in particular the US and UK.

The same delusion rhetoric after attacking a hospital, another today. Everything is simply “Hamas fault”. The world shouldn’t buy the narrative of simply scapegoating “Bibi”. All the IDF soldiers we have seen making a mockery of their war crimes, all the spokespeople doing mental gymnastics to justify this genocidal level of behaviour etc. F**ck Israel (not all the people of course)

@Twentyfirst Spot on. This is the only way to make sense of what’s occurring. Basically the Military Industrial complex (MIC) has exhausted its profits via war because the only remaining countries in West Asia are too strong to go to war with (Iran, Turkey). Like snowden said, they profit from forever wars, not world ending ones. They (global elite) need friction but not a complete fracturing of the same globalized economy they are plugged into. The MIC is just one project of the global elite to milk money from, represented by the neocons and what we consider “establishment” (which Biden comes under) Think “old money” and neocon boomers vs “new money” represented by BlackRock. The new game in town now is that peace and stability are more profitable than chaos. The MIC helped crack open access to these markets, where now they’re financial industrial complex and consumer industrial complex can plug into and profit from. This is the deal making we are seeing happening. MBS from Saudi has been working with BlackRock for some time - so when MBS says the Middle East is going to be the new Europe - he’s speaking their language. That explains: Larry Fink alongside Trump in Saudi, sanctions lifted from Syria, talks of Iran along with its “historic” adversaries Saudi-UAE speaking of a joint nuclear consortium in return for sanctions being lifted off Iran. That’s why the narrative shift on Israel which is now seen as a liability - and the establishment of a Palestinian state being necessary for peace in the region. ——- Israel’s gone rogue in the way that it’s still playing by the rules of the old game ie the neocon paradigm. The neocon faction are more nationalistic than the new money Blackrock faction who are a-national, trans-national or globalist. Bibi is ramping up things before the lights go out for the neocon empire. This is the death of the neocon empire and the birth of the shark empire which are borderless, value-hunting elites that outgrew the nest they were born in - the US empire. They are now circling nations selling to privatize their future. The more sovereign states like China leading BRICS and the GCC are not allies to them but prey and partners, depending on how strong their immune systems are to negotiate with such sharks. From Trumps speech in Riyadh on Tuesday: “The so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” Thats the new money Blackrock faction speaking, and saying farewell to the primacy of the neocon game. They’ll still make money for the MIC but it’ll most likely not be from actual war but just the mere threat of it in a multi-polar world where each pole races the other in arms to maintain deterrence.

@integration journey looking up and up for the Middle East. Gulf money and Turkish muscle are stabilising the region. Now that Israel is internally fractured and economically fragile along with the US - the rising regional powers have stepped in to take control. Shifting centres of power. This isn’t because the Western elite grew a conscience as much as it is adapting to a new reality. They exhausted their military industrial complex and will now attempt to fit into the multipolar world where they can rather profit more from stability and new markets in the global south.