zazen

They don’t even have the same political systems let alone ideaologies. India, Brazil and South Africa are democracies - 3/5 BRICS members or 60%. The main thing their united around is the fact that the current system is rigged against their interests - that 15% of the world can dictate to 85% of the world via institutional leverage. Your framing turns what is a structural correction and shift in power into an ideological crusade that justifies then resisting this shift in power by containing those rising in power. Multi-polarity is the opposite of monopoly. Have a good weekend.

@Breakingthewall No where did I justify October 7th - you just miss the forest for the trees continuously which is why Raze lets AI do the wasteful work of stooping to the level of your arguments. Notice how you either don’t engage with the point, strawman it, or move the goalpost once logically cornered. First you said no starvation or mass hunger is there, now you say it is obvious it is there - well done. Then I leave behind the argument revolving around intent being there (despite providing statements and plans of it being there) to cause hunger as a pressure tactic. I instead go on to show you how regardless of intent - Israeli actions are causing those unlivable conditions. But you still say it wasn’t there intent and civilians aren’t targeted because their warned. I address that by extrapolating it out to what we have now which is that the other buildings they go to continue to be destroyed until the whole place becomes destroyed - unlivable. You don’t even address it - perhaps because you can’t. So now you simply justify Israel’s actions of collective punishment as necessary because of the psychotic behaviour of the few among them - never mind the conditions that may have caused them to become the way they are, and the fact that continuing and worsening those conditions keeps them that way. You basically argue for collective punishment. Your logic could be used to bomb the entire Caribbean because of the depraved acts of Epstein Island or perhaps Israel because of the psychotic chants of Maccabi fans. I hope you can see my profile picture and zoom in enough to read the caption.

Ask yourself why anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles happened. Then you''ll understand why October 7th happened. Your psychoanalyzing the situation rather than structurally analyzing it - ''oh what were their emotions and facial expression on October 7th'' - think bigger, zoom out and get to the root cause instead of deflecting and defending the structural injustice at hand that obviously distorts the psyche of the people the injustice is being inflicted upon.

Cleanse it is what they want to do - as they've stated so many times and as their actions are in line with. Blockading and siege is a pressure tactic to achieve that. They want to make it ''un-liveable''. ''The Israeli government is reportedly planning to ratchet up its blockade on Gaza as part of what it has called a “hell plan” to pressure Hamas into further hostage releases without a troop withdrawal from the Palestinian territory.'' ''The government of Benjamin Netanyahu was reported to have made preparations to go beyond the suspension of food and fuel announced on Sunday'' https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/03/israel-prepares-gaza-hell-plan-to-pile-pressure-on-hamas-reports?utm_source=chatgpt.com Eiland stated that Hamas would "either have to surrender or to starve," saying that "it will not be necessary" for the Israeli military to kill everyone in northern Gaza as "people will not be able to live there. The water will dry up." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_generals'_plan?utm_source=chatgpt.com ___ Look, we can argue about intent being there or not. But the outcome is the same as you've admitted - hunger is there. There's a difference between saying starvation is being committed (with intent) vs starvation is occurring (as a by product of war and logistic difficulty). Regardless of intent - the end outcome of starvation is happening and it's tied to Israeli actions - even if the intent isn't there. Let's say I don't have the intent to kill you and I tell you I want to target the criminal in your building. I warn you and give you time to leave - then destroy the building hoping I got the criminal. Okay - that's overkill to do that anyway because that action alone has still made you homeless, but lets accept it as needed to get the criminal. You now go to seek refuge next door - and then I say the same thing to you again and again and again until most of your city is destroyed. I destroyed even the places you sought refuge in, even the tents, even the health care system, even the schools - and everything that makes the place livable. Do I now excuse my actions by saying my intent wasn't to kill you and that I warned you? The end effect is that I've made the place unlivable for you. Whoopsie, I may or not mot have hit the targeted criminal but you live in un-livable conditions hehe whoopsie sorry. Do you see how retarded that is? At some point it must occur that your actions are causing these issues. It's not like Israeli's are so ''present to the moment'' like eckhart tolle that they don't realize the consequences of their actions and can't see that they’re destroying the entire place. They can't just wave it away with plausible deniability by saying they warned them to leave and didn't target them, but just kept targeting place after place until the entire place has become the target and is now un-livable.

BRICS doesn't exist for the sole purpose of bringing down global democracy but as a reaction against a uni-polar imperial monopoly on global power. The West has been anything but democratic at a geopolitical macro level, even if internally they are democracies - even failed ones, now failing even more. Those failures are more due to structural changes and internal pressures rather than some conspiracy by BRICS. It's because of structural changes to the world order and the Wests position in it + our own system's internal contradictions reaching crisis point. Its a response to a changing order from a uni-polar one where the West reigns supreme to a multi-polar one they no longer do. The internal contradictions coming to a head are: decades of neoliberalism hollowing out the middle class, financialization concentrating wealth upward, de-industrialization destroying the working class, surveillance capitalism eroding privacy, corporate capture of democratic institutions, rising inequality, immigration and cultural change + economic anxiety = reactionary politics. China, Russia or Iran didn't do any of that to us - our own elites and special interest class did - who sold their actions as being for the national interest when it was anything but. China and Russia opportunistically exploit those vulnerabilities but didn't create them. Multi-polarity isn't emerging because the West chose it but because they couldn't prevent it. So the order is changing and the Wests privileged position in it is ending - the economic pie is shrinking including our ability to capture new pies being grown elsewhere (China+developing world). Western societies are responding in various ways to compensate for that loss - right wing nationalism and authoritarian leaning is one of them. BRICS is actually calling for being democratic between nations (on a global level) even if internally they aren't - multi-polarity where institutions reflect and represent everyone rather than having a uni-polar dictatorship run the planet.

@Breakingthewall From AI: “International criteria exist. Starvation and famine aren’t opinions; they’re defined by standardized measures, mainly from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), used by the UN, WHO, and WFP. Starvation refers to acute food deprivation leading to malnutrition and increased mortality. Famine (IPC Phase 5) is declared when: ≥20 % of households face extreme food shortage, ≥30 % of children suffer acute malnutrition, death rate exceeds 2 per 10 000 people per day. International bodies have applied those terms to Gaza. The UN and the World Food Programme in early 2024 reported that parts of northern Gaza had famine conditions under IPC Phase 5. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “Everyone in Gaza is hungry,” calling it “a moral outrage.” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in March 2024, “Starvation is being used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine.” HRW and Amnesty both published findings that Israel was using starvation as a method of warfare. These aren’t activist slogans — they’re official designations and legal assessments. Your counterpart is actually substituting anecdote for data. Saying “they don’t look starving” is a subjective visual impression. Saying “the IPC and UN have classified this as famine conditions” is a fact. So the inversion is clear: he’s calling your evidence-based statement an “opinion” while his visually-based intuition is the opinion. The fair-minded conclusion: If credible international monitoring systems — which rely on nutrition surveys, mortality rates, and caloric intake data — determine famine conditions exist, then the only objective position is to accept that data unless one can produce equally rigorous counter-data.” Not as long as Razes AI lol don’t worry. It’s not my opinion, yours on the contrary is an opinion. I’m going by facts stated by global institutions according to their own definitions which aren’t only ever applied to the worst manifestation of those definitions. As it states - there are phases to starvation. You think the only form of starvation is the absolute end phase when someone is a skeleton and dehydrated like the desert. The reason for having phases is to prevent the absolute worst phases from coming - by having lower intensity phases as sounding alarms. Otherwise how would international law go about stopping “plausible” genocide, ethnic cleansing and starvation - if they only define situations AFTER the fact when it’s too late to do anything about it. It’s like telling someone who’s anaemic (low iron) that their not malnourished because they still eat food.

@Breakingthewall We already went over the fact that they don’t need to visibly look unhealthy or starving but can still be under conditions of starvation. Raze also shared images of starved people after many years yet looking “healthy” in your eyes. I think you take the most extreme case of any definition as the only application of that definition. If you narrow down the definition to its most extreme manifestation then of course you won’t apply it. If many institutions and global bodies are referring it as such then we should perhaps go by their definition and not create our own. Although I can understand that sometimes we don’t consider these institutions as credible because they can be politicized and used or misused as tools of the powerful. But surely - if a global institution like the UN etc are calling the situation in Israel as it is then it’s more accurately closer to reality than not - because they have every incentive not to invite the consequences of a global superpower who wants to shield its ally (Israel). In fact the ICC was threatened by the US also. What political power do the Palestinians have to sway these institutions or bodies to define the situation as starvation? This is where we get Zionists calling the UN Hamas - as if they have more institutional power than the US and collective West loool

@Breakingthewall What are you on about. Your sharing videos of people clearly in agony, in the masses going after aid - what’s your point? That it’s all some movie set created to get the world’s sympathy or simply mocking their pain? Chat GPT: “Starvation isn’t always the image of skeletal bodies — especially in its early and middle stages, or when people are surviving on minimal calories, nutrient-poor food, or occasional aid. You can have: - Severe malnutrition without visible emaciation, particularly if people retain water (edema) or survive on carbs without protein. - Periods of brief refeeding, which mask chronic deprivation Famine means extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition, and elevated death rates, not just visible emaciation. Visibility and photographic evidence can lag: some people may be in advanced malnutrition before visible “skeleton” stage; water retention, edema, displacement, malnutrition without cachexia all complicate the optics.” Starvation was used as a pressure tactic / bargaining chip. Zionists on this forum in the early days of this “war” used to say so themselves when the Israel thread used to have everyone commenting on it daily (now days it’s a lot more quiet). It was intended to “pressure” Hamas. Anyone here remember those discussions? *crickets - Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (Oct 9, 2023): “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” - Energy Minister Israel Katz (Oct 12, 2023): “No electrical switch will be turned on, no water pump will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home.” In 2025 from Le Monde: Israel has come under mounting international pressure, including from key backer the United States, to lift a total blockade it imposed on Gaza more than two months ago. "We must not let the population (of Gaza) sink into famine, both for practical and diplomatic reasons," Netanyahu said, adding that even friends of Israel would not tolerate "images of mass starvation." Imagine thinking you need to prevent famine for “practical and diplomatic” reasons rather than actual moral reasons of it just being the wrong fucking thing to do. What a dark piece of shit Bibi is. My cousin actually worked in the Red Cross in Gaza for some years before all of this - she came back to the UK way before October 7th and she’s been traumatised just by her experience and what she saw or had to deal with there (before October 7th even). So don’t get the point you’re trying to make - that it’s all fake and exaggerated? Or you’re simply mocking it which shows your heartlessness like Bibi. Raze is right to respond with just AI and not waste any breath or energy in responding if so. The following is the level of tone deafness on display from you: Sudans famine is notoriously known and accepted to be one. Go google Sudan famine in images and see for yourself - not everyone “looks” like a skeleton who is considered to be under condition of famine.

My mom tells me I’m handsome, AI tells me “I’m absolutely right”, and Leo Gura tells me I’m God. In all seriousness, I actually debate AI a hour a day and beat its ass. Highly recommend as a mental gym for brain gains.

I didn't side step intentionally - it's just lengthy to get into (I write enough already lol) and your framing is based upon incorrect facts and a incoherent logic that takes time to go over. 1. Ok - first the incorrect fact that BRICS dwarves Western hegemony. BRICS has a larger combined population and comparable combined GDP, but that doesn't translate to power projection or some cohesive hegemony. BRICS is a coalition of interests (some divergent, some aligned) - not a unified system. The US led order is structurally integrated - militarily, diplomatically, economically. US military spending alone ($800 mill - now $1 trillion) exceeds all BRICS combined ( approx $400 billion) - NATO total spending is approx $1.5 trillion. The US has 750 overseas military bases vs Russia/China having dozens at most. The dollar remains the world's reserve currency and the US controls key international institutions (IMF, World Bank, SWIFT) The US and its allies built, lead and control the global order - finance, trade, reserve currency, and military alliances. China,Russia and others exist within that order - and are constantly reacting to its leverage and finding ways to get out from under it's dominance. Which they are only now successfully doing - and in which the West are trying to prevent. You saying they aren't contained doesn't mean they weren't trying to be (which you admit) and still aren't trying to be (which you overlook) - which is the whole issue to begin with in raising the tensions you bemoan (current instability flirting with WW3). You get cause and effect backwards. Which brings me to the next point. 2. Second, the incoherent logic. You say the world was “safer” under containment of Russia and China - admitting that containment existed, but then gloss over the fact that this containment or attempt at containment is still present - and deny the reactions to that containment as reactions, instead framing them as acts of aggression out of nowhere. Containment doesn't mean "perfect control where the contained power never does anything." It means strategic encirclement and pressure designed to limit their options and undermine their influence. NATO expanded to Russia's borders. The US has military alliances and bases surrounding China. Both countries face economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation efforts, and constant military pressure. But because they still have agency and can still do things, you've decided they are no longer contained or attempting to be so - to which they are reacting! It's like saying prison doesn't work because inmates still commit crimes inside, or that sanctions don't exist because Iran still has an economy. Containment creates pressure - pressure creates reactions - sometimes violent reactions. It's part of that pattern recognition you love to reference. You shift the time frame to either be too narrow which strips any action of its context - by blaming the latest reaction as a act of aggression as if it happened in a vacuum, or you broaden it by saying this is a historical pattern and this is how all powers act - which is partially true but analytically not helpful in understanding the current dynamics. There's never a defined analytical window within which to understand current geopolitics - no coherence. It's just zoom in and out where convenient - to avoid looking at the fact that there is a current world order in which these actors are responding to. Your flirting with structural level analysis but then fleeing from it because having to stay with it and follow that line of logic acknowledges a structural order - within which actors are acting and reacting - and coming to the conclusion that perhaps Russia and China are reacting to the pressures within that order - led by the US as the structural aggressor and hegemon of that order looking to contain them. There are different levels of analyzing events: a individual level (what choices did a actor make?), a domestic level (what internal political pressures existed?), and a systemic level (what structural conditions shaped available choices?). All three levels exist simultaneously. You observe patterns, use them to predict behaviour, but never explain why those patterns exists through systemic analysis, only psychoanalysis ie the actor must be imperial minded and every actor is responsible for their own actions and has agency - evading the systemic pressures within which their actions and agency were constrained and limited. 3. Thirdly, to shed some clarity on your perspective which is stuck in binary thinking. Your stuck between a binary of fatalism and idealism. You either default to accepting power dynamics exist and there's nothing we can do about them because history repeats and is inevitable - or you wish for a world in which power dynamics didn't need to exist and angelic Europe can just exist without getting stuck between the power competition of great powers. You miss the third option of there being a middle ground where power dynamics and survival pressures are not denied (Utopian), or indulged / surrendered to as a inevitability of nature asserting itself (law of the jungle) - but managed through maturity, humility and diplomacy. Humility would allow for seeing the world as it is at a structural level - and seeing the order within which all actors are positioned and acting upon their position within that order (targeted as a threat to be contained or pampered and accepted as a ally). That's the basis for diplomacy and management of power competition. Not the arrogance of Western hegemony which frames things through a myopic lens by starting the clock at the latest act of aggression, omitting all the provocations and systemic pressure leading up to it. This just guarantees evading root causes which are needed to be addressed for a lasting solution. Everything else is downstream of that structural order. Grey warfare, cold war, covert ops etc. We don't have to delve into hundreds of examples once we know the root cause of the issue. It boils down to a structural mismanagement of survival pressures and power dynamics in the current world order - because the hegemon in that current world order has no incentive to give up the status quo within which they are the dominant player.

@Hatfort Nice share. I remember another thread Raze made with them two discussing geopolitics. I grappled with the differences they had to make sense of it and commented on it here: Mearsheimer surrenders to the power dynamics of human nature, while Sachs aspires to the principles of human nurture (nature vs nurture, power vs principle). Mearsheimer's world view is fatalsitic in that it projects onto China the Wests own behaviour because ''this is how all power operates'' and ''this is the nature of things'' leaving out any variation in how that power or nature can be potentially exercised or nurtured towards better ends. Otherwise why bother with any civilization building - why not just default to ''nature'' and ''law of the jungle''. We shouldn't resign to the law of the jungle where power rules (darwinian minded ''realists''), we can't ever erase power dynamics and survival pressure either (detached utopian progressives) - we can only manage them properly (through maturity, diplomacy, humility). These realists sometimes just come across like nihilists and leave little hope or space for cooperation. They surrender to the human animal in us, rather than working with the humanity (consciousness) in us that separates man from animal. Wrote that last year, and it's panning out along those lines as we see today.

As I was saying above - these moves will bend, not break Russia. https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-sanctions-russian-oil-europe-lukoil-rosneft/ From politico: “For Moscow, the new sanctions will mean immediate pain, but are unlikely to curtail its war effort in Ukraine.” And then Germany expecting to be exempt from these sanctions: “We assume that the measures taken by the United States … are not intended to target Rosneft’s subsidiaries in Germany, which are held in trust by the German states,” said a spokesperson for the German economy ministry.” Rules for me not for theee https://www.ft.com/content/0d9a5946-1cb6-4c0b-aa5b-7f5383dedef7 Sober watch/listen. TLDR - Neutrality or neutralisation. - Europe will be buying (insert X countries name) oil, with Russian characteristics.

@BlueOak We’ve been here before. Iv acknowledged agency exists but you don’t seem to acknowledge the agency of the hegemon running the current system which is trying contain certain actors - and then acting surprised when these same actors respond aggressively to that containment. No one’s justifying war crimes or unwilling to say war is bad. It’s trying to understand the root cause of these wars at a systemic level which is largely driven by a mix of survival pressures, security dilemma’s and power dynamics not being handled properly within a sound security architecture - which there is little incentive for by the current hegemon who is too arrogant to share power with others in the same system - thus seeking their containment - thus causing the current tensions. In Israel’s case - this hegemon has structurally supported and shielded it from any consequence in settling and dominating the land and its natives. What I wrote on time frame and systemic analysis which I emboldened is especially important if we are to make any sense of current geopolitics. I’m not going to go all the way back to the Ottoman Empire to make sense of Turkeys behaviour today which is acting in a different context and under a different system and as a different entity - the same way I won’t assess Russia as if it’s still the USSR.

If you acknowledge US as being a naughty devil and the uni-polar hegemon of the current world order - then extend that logic to understand that it may be the one proliferating the naughtiness of others in either pampering some into impunity (Israel) or trying to contain others (Russia/China) within the order they are the lords of, which causes those being contained to respond with more naughtiness. The US itself bends under the pressure of its own contradictions within the same order it leads, whilst attempting to bend others it doesn't like and wishes to contain, while bending itself over for Israel and Bibis cock. Jokes aside. The US and it's allies are the architects of the current world order in which the US undermines its very own rules by a mile beyond any other. It monopolizes enforcement by its selective application of the ''rules'' in this order - hollowing out the systems legitimacy by doing so. That’s why Israel acts with impunity - because it’s shielded by the same empire that exempts itself from accountability. In fact, that empire literally has a law that allows itself and it's allies to be lawless via ''The Hague Act''. Chat GPT: ''The Hague Act refers to a 2002 U.S. law that was designed to protect U.S. military and government officials from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The act gives the U.S. president the authority to use "all means necessary and appropriate," including military force, to free any U.S. or allied personnel held by the ICC.'' Imagine legalizing the invasion of Netherlands in order to allow oneself and his buddies to be unlawful all they want lool. Israel isn't surrounded by enemy state actors. It's not at existential threat objectively - perhaps subjectively: like that liberal progressive who feels threatened by being addressed by the wrong pronoun. But this isn't objective reality - let alone a micro-aggression, meanwhile the maco-aggression of ethnic cleansing taking place is an actual threat against Palestinians. The threats are security related (not survival) and are non-state actors (Hamas, Hezbollah) that exist precisely due to the occupation and that would end being a security issue upon cessation of that occupation.

From my Chat GPT research also: ''The drop in rail freight mostly signals that: - Civilian and manufacturing sectors are weakening. - Some export routes (coal, metals, fertilizer) have bottlenecks. - Energy exports remain the government’s priority and are insulated by pipelines and the shadow fleet system. The state is cannibalizing profitability of its infrastructure to sustain war and social stability. RZD remains solvent because it can borrow from state banks and get subsidies — profitability is optional in a command economy. In a Western market, a 90 % profit drop would threaten bankruptcy. In Russia, it’s more like a political tax: the railway is an arm of the government, not an independent business. This kind of profit compression is showing up across the Russian state sector: Gazprom, RZD, Rosseti (electric grid), and others. They’re all being converted from enterprises that generate surplus into instruments that absorb pressure. That’s how an authoritarian war economy survives: it trades profit for control.'' There's a difference between collapse and austerity measures or adaptions to pressure. The pressure isn't denied - the idea of collapse being inevitable is, to the point of no Russian state existing or regions breaking away. Bonuses doesn't mean no money left to pay for the army, police and other vital functions. It takes a lot to get to that point. Regional issues are buffered by the state - even if regionally they are functionally bankrupt or squeezed, they can be kept afloat through subsidies in a command economy which Russia is running. There's more risk of stagnation and slow decline of living standards especially unequally as rural regions don't get priority - but nothing close to mass famine or being frozen to death to the point people revolt. That won't happen in a resource rich country as long as things are managed well enough logistically. Succession is highly unlikely: ''The USSR was a union of republics, each with its own government, military units, and legal right to leave. That’s what made dissolution possible. The Russian Federation, by contrast, is unitary in practice: -No republic has independent control of its borders or military. -All governors are appointed or tightly controlled by the Kremlin. -Security services (FSB, Rosgvardia, etc.) are centrally loyal and heavily funded. In short: there are no “independent parts” to break away. Any independence movements are tiny, fragmented, and heavily infiltrated by the FSB. Russia spends roughly 40% of its national budget on defense, internal security, and intelligence. Rosgvardia alone numbers over 300,000—essentially a national gendarmerie to crush domestic uprisings. Regional elites know that any hint of secession would mean immediate arrest, replacement, or military intervention. This isn’t a free-market democracy but a centralized security state.'' If things continue down the same path like you said - things will rot to the point of possible collapse sure. But that negates the human element of actually responding to pressure and doing something to adapt to it as to bend rather than break under pressure - just as Ukraine showed their adaptability through innovative use of drones. A lot of the same points (about Russia’s finances) can be made about the West who have much higher public debt than Russia and who similarly have rural dissatisfaction against urbanites and Western capitals where wealth and power is concentrated, to the point we have populism in much of the West. We also get similar doomerism collapse narratives these days because of it. This has been a major driver of Brexit, flirtations of Frexit, and why we may see Scotland break way from the UK before we see Russia break up: The West is financialized much more than Russia who have hard assets the world needs - hence why even a US ally like Japan is saying it will do what's in its interest (purchase Russian energy): https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/japan-act-national-interest-russian-energy-says-industry-minister-2025-10-21/ Japan's debt to GDP is 250% and it still hasn't collapsed because its managed it through various means - pointing out that collapse isn't always inevitable, neither is it for the West despite signs of strain. Chat GPT comparison: ''Russia can “cannibalize itself” far longer than the West can print itself out of trouble — because its system was never built on trust-based debt in the first place. Here’s the sober comparison: Russia - Public debt: ~18% of GDP — among the lowest in the world. - Foreign debt exposure: minimal, since sanctions cut it off from Western markets. - Central Bank reserves: ~$580B (even with $300B frozen abroad, the rest is in gold/yuan). - Gold reserves: ~$150B — the 5th largest globally, and growing. - Fiscal deficit: 2–3% of GDP (manageable given oil revenue). - Domestic financing: self-contained — state banks can print liquidity, and Moscow can simply decree bond purchases or order “voluntary contributions” from oligarchs. That’s what “self-cannibalization” means in practice — the state can eat its internal capital base, squeeze the oligarchs, raid the wealth fund, monetize deficits, and reorient resources without the system collapsing. Painful? Yes. Fatal? Not unless the state loses control of violence or legitimacy. United States (and the West generally) - U.S. public debt: >125% of GDP and climbing. - EU average: ~85–90%, with countries like Italy at ~140%. - Fiscal deficits: ~6–7% in the U.S., worsening under rising interest costs. - Dependency: the system depends on global trust in Western credit and the dollar. - Constraint: can’t “self-cannibalize” without triggering a currency or bond crisis — because the system is the debt. So ironically, the very thing the West calls “resilience” — a consumption-based, debt-financed economy — makes it far more brittle in a long attritional squeeze. Russia’s model is crude, but self-sufficient. The West’s is sophisticated, but trust-dependent. 🔄 Who has more room? Russia has more physical resilience (energy, food, low debt, centralized control). The West has more financial resilience (liquidity, global trust, network power). But in a world where trust is eroding and blocs are forming, Russia’s primitive robustness outlasts the West’s paper flexibility.'' One of many actions that erodes trust in the Western financial system are actions like seizing and using Russian assets that the EU is going to vote on this week - beside weaponizing the system itself against others who are trying to extricate themselves out of it by building a alternative ie BRICS. Again - our discussion about systems and the global order in which these conflicts have emerged due to pressures within that order. Even UK's top army officer Lord Richards (who said Ukraine can't win) mentioned how ''the rest'' is rising against the West because of its history and current abuses of its power in this system and ''world order''. Even the Belgium PM warned of the risks of using these assets as it is Belgium who holds them in the Euroclear system - they take on the risk as their the ones holding the bag: This is the EU's built in contradiction on display. National interests are sub-ordinate to the supra-national political entity of the EU - hence internal tensions over funding, quotas etc. Spain is being finger wagged for not holding up its NATO commitment in spending now. Romania and Hungary just had Russian linked facilities sabotaged yet no article 5 has been triggered - very fishy: EU member countries energy security can be sabotaged (Nordstream aside) and nothing happens (including investigations shutdown) but a non-EU country gets its ass licked and pampered at the expense of EU members - this is like a Israel-America dynamic occurring. A financialized system relies on faith and trust - something the West is abusing, the rest of the world is watching and hedging against. Once the alternative matures, we will see a slow decline in Western financial hegemony via de-dollarization. Right now the system and alternatives are in their infancy - still, people are jumping ship looking for a stable dingy (Bitcoin, Gold for example) not to risk being on the titanic. Looking at it at from a systems level and why this global order is the cause of so much dis-order we see today: just take China as a example. They were accepted and integrated into it via the WTO in 2001 - they built themselves and re-invested their gains to develop whilst benefiting Western corps and sending cheap goods to subsidize a Western lifestyle that bought these goods with pieces of paper (Dollars) that are en-trusted with ''perceived'' value rather than the real value of those tangible goods: the difference between wealth (real resources, tangibles, food) vs money (financialization, intangible, the menu and not the food). This is the exorbitant privilege of the reserve currency slowly on its way out due to its very abuse. What happened in this system that benefited both parties? China got too big that it started threatening the dominance of those atop that system - not threatening them in any real sense - just their dominance. This is why US foreign policy started shifting in tone with Obama's ''Pivot to Asia'' in 2011, becoming more concrete from 2015 and in 2018 resulting in the first tariffs and tech restrictions under Trump. Biden added to this with semi-conductor bans which is essentially the oxygen of the modern world - as good as a blockade. Bi-partisan containment policy rather than one of competing against them. China has only retaliated in a concrete way now with its rare earth restrictions against Trump adding to this containment policy. The point is - Russia and China are too big to ignore, yet too big to allow within the system as ''equals'' as they threaten the dominance of those on top of it. Beside the trust deficit of a post soviet collapse - Russia would never be allowed to share space within EU for the same reasons - elbow space wouldn’t want to be shared with such a large bloke who’d eat up more of the food and dictate table etiquette (rules). It used to be UK-France-Germany that dominated the EU but now it is solely France-German interests that are prioritized. Hence, a new system and world order (multi-polar) is looking to be made. Refined exports were hit due to Ukraine's drones, but that wasn't and isn't enough to break Russia's war machine funding - because crude oil is the bulk of their exports (70%) and not refined oil processed in refineries being hit. Hence the need to now sanction even those (crude) exports - which will be worked around using the shadow fleet system already in place. Ghost protocol: Energy bound for damaged or offline refineries can be re-routed towards crude exports, sent off to refine at refineries (in Belarus or Kazakhstan for example) and sent back to be used domestically to cover domestic shortage. Refineries out of reach of drone range can also be used instead in central Russia/Siberia etc. This is why the drone tactic of repeatedly hitting refineries isn't a knock out punch in the way its portrayed in the media - not enough to break Russia at least. Adaptions happen and countries are more resilient than they seem - just like how the world got through COVID time shocks and supply chain restrains - things are eventually worked through and around.

Resolve the core issue rather cause more issues by becoming a pariah state the world hates and getting hated on wherever you go as a tourist, sadly. Their not threatened from all sides. Their existence isn't at stake - its not a survival issue but a security issue caused by occupation. In other words - a security dilemma they have created by their own actions and continue to perpetuate rather than resolving the core issue. If a man takes my brother hostage with his gun to his head and arm around his neck - I don't just bomb the both of them. I also don't ask the criminal to step to the side to make space between him and my brother so I can bomb him anyway. If he wants something in exchange - it depends on what he's asking for. If the demand is nonsense and maximalist (such as I commit suicide in exchange for my brothers life ie Israel doesn't exist in exchange for a Palestinian state) then things get complicated and messy. If its a balanced demand (ie they want to exist in a Palestinian state with sovereignty along side Israel) then it should be entertained. If the demand is for a inalienable right the world already has consensus on and that I have little ground in standing in the way of - unless I want to be hated by the world for doing so and gaslight everyone for being anti-Semitic - then it makes sense to let the right manifest. It's called diplomacy and win-win cooperation - something Western hegemony is too arrogant for.

It’s like saying criminals hide among New Yorker civilians - theres literally no where that isn’t a civilian area in such densley populated places. Gaza’s more densely populated than Tokyo and equal to Hong Kong. Where is Hamas supposed to fight from? We can’t expect Hamas to come out in the open and fight like in some Western showdown lol not when one sides F35 will zap them into dust and they have tanks and armor. Maybe they should do a UFC fight with bare fist only and no civilians get hurt but can watch instead.

@BlueOak Regarding the Tomahawks - the issue is in the ambiguity and the fact that NATO or the US could put nuclear warheads even if Ukraine doesn't have them itself. Nuclear deterrence runs on worst-case logic and Russia will have to factor this in. Beside that - the range is threatening enough and it would mean US/Western involvement much more concretely in strikes upon Russia which complicates Russia's position. Does that mean that they then start striking arms industry in NATO countries? It brings up many questions and raises the stakes. The fact its taken so lightly shows the willingness of some to escalate the war into a hot one and spread it beyond Ukraine. Do you think Russia would allow itself to collapse before leveling Ukraine? Don't you think Putin being out would invite someone much more hard line than he is and escalate this war even further? Many things are being balanced and calibrated at all times - including the intensity of the war. Things have been kept in the tank for the contingency of NATO getting involved directly down the line. If Russia was really about to collapse we'd see a entirely different kind of war being waged - scorched earth kind like in Gaza. Russia clearly doesn't want a ceasefire but a permanent resolution to the whole issue. A ceasefire just means Ukraine can re-group and build up again to continue at a later date. Also, article 73 of the Ukrainian constitution makes any agreement to alter Ukraine's borders legally void unless approved by a nationwide referendum so any concession made without that could be thrown out later. Let's see what happens.

@BlueOak @Breakingthewall That’s definitely a lot of pressure being applied for once - via drones of all tools. They seem to be doing what sanctions intended to - whether that bends or breaks Russia is to be seen. Let’s say all this pans out to the point of collapse - do we really think Russia is going to sit by and allow itself to collapse or wouldn’t it level Ukraine before that even happens? As Israel has done to Gaza. If all this chaos takes Putin out who comes after? As far as I know Putin seems to be the more restrained among the lot who are growing frustrated with him not gong all out. Putins seems to be balancing things as to not tilt so far into forcing NATO’s direct involvement or alienation from its allies or the world for going scorched earth and racking up the civilian death toll. The reason tomahawks escalate things is because when launched no one can tell whether their equipped with nuclear warheads or not - so Russia would have to take this into account and respond for the worst case which risks nuclear war. Yet we have Eurocons egging all this on as if they’re unaware of the basics. Seems it was a bluff tactic as Trump is known for. Are we all ready to spill blood for this war? Good listen going into the fragile situation we’re currently in: It’s a narrative war out there. This for example: https://x.com/simpatico771/status/1980718375757029645?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ See the exchange of bodies linked in that tweet which shows Russia exchanging far more Ukrainian casualties than Ukraine. Fog of war. If manpower eventually becomes an issue - what next? Europe sending troops and direct war.. It seems on all fronts there are massive pressures which is why even UK’s top chief is saying what he is (Ukraine can’t win). Manpower, arms (Trump saying they need it for themselves), funding (freezing assets now which isn’t optically good for trust in Western finance and will have consequences). Just more de-industrialising and bad economic outlook for Europe with all the moves being made (Nexperia also). Today a refinery in Hungary is ablaze now too lol. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2025/10/20/should-frozen-russian-assets-fund-ukraine-eu/ “The West does not have the resources to bankroll an indefinite war. Instead, fatigue has risen – notably in the United States – for continuing to finance Ukraine. There is a curtailed capacity to deliver on loans and grants when many western governments face political and budgetary turmoilthemselves. Ukraine can no longer rely on the United States to deliver any sustained financing. This means the European Union – already Ukraine’s single largest financier – will have to foot much of the bill. But there may be a voter backlash within the EU if the military funding of Ukraine comes at the expense of domestic spending. The only realistic resource at this stage is the Russian assets.” All they have now are drones and courage it seems. Or a invitation to scorched earth policy from NATO stepping in directly of which Ukraine will be the first casualty. Even if Eurocons and Neocons get their wet dream of ousting Putin, that will bring in a someone with a harsher stance they need to deal with - so what’s the off ramp here? Seems the battlefield will decide.

I agree - it requires an inclusive security architecture of “indivisible security” as they say. The problem is a security guarantee is as good as NATO article 5 which is a large factor of this war to begin with - hence it needs to be made to include Russia rather than exclude them. All this hybrid warfare exists because when two powers are too strong to go directly at each other - things go ghost protocol and grey zone tactics instead. Countries (mainly powers) engage in these things all the time (welcome to geopolitics) but Russia’s engagement is intensified and shadowy due to the larger geopolitical struggle and stakes at play. Israel literally spies on its allies and they aren’t even rivals. Russia’s intelligence services are as active as the CIA, MI6 or Mossad. They differ in style, visibility and intensity. Western agencies can influence via NGOs, media and “democracy promotion”. Lobbying in the West is basically legalised influence which Russia is locked out of. So Israel, Saudi Arabia, or European allies / US corporates can “influence” each other officially while Russia uses unofficial means. The bottom line in reducing all those tensions (and hybrid antics which will never go away but can only ever be managed in the world of politics) is normalisation of ties and a proper security architecture that resolves the underlying tension between Russia’s relationship with the West. Write this in another thread but it’s worth a read (including the Glen Diesen Substack): People need to realise this a larger war than Ukraine-Russia. The reason Tomahwaks can't be given and most likely won't be is because whilst Western involvement in this war is obvious (intelligence, ISR, Western arms and aims at the expense of Ukrainian blood etc) Tomahawks or any system that requires the very explicit involvement of the US to operate such systems (that can't simply be given to those without the operational ability) increases the tensions between rival powers who are avoiding direct conflict (a hot war vs a cold indirect one via proxy now). The stakes are simply too high unless you want to risk WW3 and gamble on that. This is where Ukraine finds itself in a bad position - because it's provided defensive means but never the offensive means that can perhaps tilt the balance in their favor - which may not happen even if they were provided. Those offesnive weapons simply risk a hot war between Russia and the West that is being avoided at all costs by the sane minded, or being flirted with by the insane Eurocons who dream of Balkanizing Russia and taking the fight to them - not knowing what that even means. This is why diplomacy is the only way and the cutting of losses to prevent further losses (to life or land). As we speak there are encirclement of the front line cities with Pokrovsk being a major logistical hub in the cross hairs. The linear thinking of - Russia only captures x km of land in x amount of time therefore it would take them 100s of years to capture all of Ukraine - is simply not smart. War isn't linear - if certain places fall they can have a domino effect more than others and leave wide open spaces to take land more easily than others. Attrition warfare is never linear. Ukraine's drone strategy is good in causing issues in Russia - but the other side of this is that facilities get repaired and back online within weeks at times, and Russia can adapt or move product to other regions to be refined etc. Things shouldn't be overstated. Even if we think the West can cause enough chaos in Russia as to have Putin overthrown - what does that achieve? Putin is actually seen as more of a moderate in Russia - do we really want someone like Medvedev to come into power? lol. This is a good video on the gas situation: We are told that to be patriotic and Pro-Western (values and all) is to egg on a Chihuahua (Ukraine) to fight a Pitbull (Russia), and that anyone talking of a diplomatic solution is a Russian bot. We can't even see the diplomacy Russia/Putin has engaged in since his coming into power, let alone early on in this as the Istanbul negotiations showed. We're lied to and pysoped about every other war or imperial arrangement (Israel-Western ties) but can't fathom similar taking place with regards to this conflict.

Those patterns are definitely observable - they exist because human nature is constant enough to create probabilities, but consciousness adds variance. A good way to look at it is the container vs consciousness. The container shifts odds, but doesn't always determine destiny. Structures/systems/containers are the bones and meat suit (container) humans operate within, but it's the brain soup of the psyche, culture and consciousness that moves within it and directs towards better or worse outcomes. So a intersection of fatalism and agency. Structural constraints (nature) sets the stage (incentives and pressures) within which the psyche behaves (plays on the stage). Usually humans behave more similar than different, therefore patterns emerge. So I guess we could weight it more towards nature determining outcomes,than nurture shifting towards different outcomes. For example from Chat GPT: ''The term “Thucydides Trap” comes from political scientist Graham Allison, who examined 16 historical cases over the past 500 years in which a rising power threatened to displace a ruling power, ending in war. Here are the facts from his Harvard Belfer Center study (“Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?”): Out of 16 cases, 12 ended in war, and 4 did not. That’s about 75% war, 25% peace.'' Variance showing not all power or positions of power are abused: You can be so honourable that even your rivals respect you. That’s why there are fewer “greats” however. As you point out observable patterns show up - because nature acts out the same more often under the same conditions than not. Exceptions get the adoration because they “transcended” nature or more so exercise it with some conscience (that separates man from animal). Man doesn’t simply default to nature but can determine and exercise will upon it - nature is the starting point not the end point. “When Saladin retook Jerusalem in 1187, he was in the same structural position as the Crusaders a century earlier: a victorious conqueror standing over a defeated, occupied city. The conditions were identical — military triumph, religious rivalry, opportunity for revenge. Yet his response could not have been more different. The Crusaders, when they took Jerusalem in 1099, massacred Muslims and Jews indiscriminately, bathing the city in blood. Saladin, in contrast, pardoned the city’s Christians, allowed orderly ransom for captives, invited Jews back to resettle, and guaranteed protection for holy sites.”

“Ukraine cannot win its war with Russia and should negotiate peace terms with the Kremlin, according to Britain’s most senior army officer. Reflecting on Ukraine’s chances of success against Russia, he said: “My view is that they would not win.” “Could not win, even with the right resources?” he was asked. “No,” he replied. Pressed further by The Independent, he was asked: “ Even with the right resources?” “No, they haven’t got the manpower,” the former commando said. In his first long-form podcast interview, Lord Richards, the only British officer to have commanded massed US troops at war since 1945, said the outlook for Ukraine was not good. “Unless we were to go in with them – which we won’t do because Ukraine is not an existential issue for us. It clearly is for the Russians, by the way,” he said on World of Trouble. “We’ve decided because it’s not an existential issue, we will not go to war." Sobering truth from 36min - 50min from UK’s top army officer. Another good one:

Thank you 😄 News from just today: Ceasefire broken already it seems.