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@Nivsch Hope you and everyone there are safe and this ends soon. Hezbollah has been exhausted for sure. I think Assad falling has helped Israel greatly as now Syrian airspace is clear for Israel to fly through and attack Iran. Also, supply lines to Hezbollah are disrupted which means they are hesitant to start something with Israel if they can't secure what they need for a prolonged conflcit. The issue with nuclear is that you can't bomb knowledge away. Even if Israel/US delay Iran being able to get nukes - the point is they have the technical knowhow and can eventually get them if they wanted to. It's like a dog eating your math homework - you lose the homework but you still know math. The US getting involved and bombing the Fordow facility under the mountain risks too much blow back. Strait of Hormuz could get shut, oil prices skyrocket affecting the world, US bases get hit by hypersonics, domestic US anger and international condemnation and fracturing of ties. The only way was and is diplomacy, which the 2015 signed JCPOA signed achieved, which Trump ripped up in 2018, which prompted Iran to enrich to a threshold point - which the US/Israel now bitch about and use a pre-text to go to war over. They were literally in negotiations - then Israel struck Iran and killed the key guy in the negotiation team - Ali Shamkhani. They can't just expect a deal in 60 days, this isn't wedding planning or a group chat trying to coordinate a holiday. The JCPOA took over 2 years, and this is writing the future of a entire regions with multiples states involved. It's not even a negotiation window, just a ultimatum. Sell me your house for pennies or I'll bomb it anyway is mob rule and imperial flexing not state to state diplomacy of mature actors. How does the world view the US now as a partner worth making deals with? All this being lost for what..Israel? Or they have their own interests and just use Israel as the scapegoat and moral cover.. If Israel wasn't hated enough already, imagine once the US gets dragged into this and we start getting US bodies in bags being flown home. Also, the hypocrisy is clear for the world to see - as if it wasn't already. Israel secretly has nukes and isn't signed to the non proliferation treaty (NPT) which means the IAEA can't inspect them. But Iran is and does have inspections. Yet - the strategic ambiguity of Israel is allowed but Iran being way less ambiguous isn't.

Vs the guy she told you not to worry about They didn’t perform with the polish and energy required of a superpower. Even Chinas female military parade projects more stregnth:

Just imagine that even on a right wingers X poll the consensus is not in favour of Israel: 90% of his audience doesn’t hold the opinion he’s paid to have. His mind just got Dun Kirk’d.

Predictable as Israel can’t stand on its own. Iran was caught off guard initially with some insane Israeli intelligence and operations. That element of surprise advantage is now gone. Irans missiles can out last Israel’s interceptors, and Israel don’t have a large enough airforce for the size of Iran to target missile launchers which can be moved around and come up from underground to be fired. Iran makes missiles like Cubans make cigars. And no Western air defence can intercept the advanced ones - meaning Israel is a sitting duck. Israel being small as it is also means its core assets can be wiped out within days IF Iran wanted to and had no care for restraint on an escalation ladder. But obviously, this is all about roping in the US to do its bidding, if not the US wanting to do this already but needing some plausible deniability - using Israel as the excuse / moral cover. Timestamp 39:50 where Professor Marandi cooks this reporter like a Khoobideh. The Middle East has a right to defend itself from Western occupation. The US has a right to defend itself against Zionist occupation of its political/security apparatus too. Humans have a right to defend themselves from all sick ideaologies leading to death and destruction - radical Zionism, Islamism, Communism, Nazism. Eylon Levy is back lol.

Hair did, nails did, errythang did 💅🏻 shocking they’re humans living life. Have they lifted the repressive hijab enforcement or something if anyone knows? It’s possible to be against a repressive regime and simultaneously imperial action against it - it being used as a pawn in geopolitics by players who couldn’t give a shit about it. Maybe instead of 100% democracy the West only need to liberate them like 20% more with pride month.

My favourite is khoobideh (kebab) with mirza gasshemi (roasted eggplant). Shit slaps. On another note - Tel Aviv just hit: A friend was asking me why Iran isn’t retaliating all day as it was getting hit quite bad, including VIP’s being decapitated to an embarrassing degree. Mainly due to visibility and partly being scrambled by Israel’s non stop attacks - as they have said it will be a 2 week long operation but it’s more of a full war now it seems. Iran seem to have been caught off guard as they were expecting nothing could possibly happen before talks on Sunday. Perhaps US-Israel played a double game to distract them with plausible deniability on the US’s part.

Probably for the same reason Trump is now calling off raids on farms and hospitality - economic interest. https://nypost.com/2025/06/12/business/trump-says-immigration-crackdown-hurting-us-workforce-signals-changes/ Like I wrote about a page or two back - incentives are the structural driver of decisions, ideaology is the overlay and justification. The US is structurally captured by economic interests / corporates. We all know this, which is why we bitch about it here and there on this forum - before the conversation gets constantly de-railed into an emotional and ideological left right dialectic.

There is obviously posturing in negotiations - which is what the whole withdrawal from US bases may have been about - to show Iran they mean business on Sundays final talk. But that was seems to be de-railed by Israel’s attack. We’ll see if Iran remains restrained like last time when they attacked with warning and co-ordination to save face. Seems to be following the Iraq WMD script. This was written yesterday: Israel can’t prevent Iran from gaining a nuke as they have the knowledge to do so. It may delay or make them think twice about it - but the ability remains. Irans facilities are deep within the mountains that can’t be reached. Trump has said the bottom line is no nukes for Iran. Irans has said bottom line is no one can tell us not to enrich uranium for civilian purposes at least. When Israel says Iran is just around the corner from a nuke today - they aren’t wrong. But it’s not because they are making one - it’s because their level of enrichment is at the threshold where if they decide to go ahead and make a nuke, they could increase it and have one within days. A bad attack on Iran just makes it more likely as they feel at existential risk. Why would Iran trust Israel/US? Gaddafi in Libya agreed to abandon his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program in exchange for normalised relations and he was couped. The Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) was struck in 2015 and complied with and yet Trump pulled out of it 3 years later. The region has been destroyed by these same players and your next on the chopping block expected to trust them..

Something is afoot. Iran-US talks not going as planned, Iran releasing intelligence of Israeli nuclear assets, Israel maybe prepping something against Iran potentially .. it’s gonna be a wild summer.

Not all nationalists are imperialists - though it can be used to justify it. China is nationalist whilst working with other nations and not against them. Many anti-imperialists are nationalists who resisted imperialism. Historically it was nationalist imperialism that ruined neighbouring nations. But thats evolved and fragmented - we now have anti-globalist populists who are nationalists divorced from imperialist action abroad, because they see it as a waste of national resources they very much need. Yet there’s still a corporate, military, and financial power blocs of elites who have no loyalty to any nation and still act imperially. They’re not patriotic but opportunistic. So nationalism once fueled empire, but is now often divorced from imperialism, and the real imperialists are no longer national but borderless.

Yeah, lawful doesn't always mean legitimate ie slavery was once legal. The abstraction of laws don't negate the reality of survival. Both sides have a argument around survival - the right frame it as national, the left frame it as personal/familial. The right is saying we need to protect the body politic at the level of the collective / nation. The left is saying we need to protect the bodies of people - at the level of the individual / neighborhood. The liberal left can be too compassionate of the individual that they overlook the collective, while the conservative right can be too dis-compassionate of individuals for the sake of the collective. The issue among the right is that they have split definitions of who they consider as the collective - civic nationalists (value based) vs etho-nationalists (race based) Leo is correct in that had the law been enforced appropriately before, it wouldn't have to be disproportionately enforced today so ruthlessly with much more collateral damage.

Posted above comment before seeing yours. It's one thing I'm conflicted on. What primarily drives action: ideology or incentive? I think its incentive with an overlay of ideology. If actors can instrumentalize ideology for their own ends, they will. If capital can capitalize compassion, it will. Liberalism’s failures are real, but its failures are also useful to capital. I'm not sure if liberal morality is causative or instrumental. Compassion can be rented when useful and discarded when redundant. If US is ruled by a corporate-oligarchy then cost-benefit analysis is primary, and morality is secondarily justified after the fact. If compassion prevented enforcement, why hasn't it prevented other predatory actions like mass incarceration, wars, corporate bailouts, denial of universal healthcare, under funding of critical investment..doesn't look like compassion dictates or prevents much in the US. Why has it been tolerated across parties for decades? One is political cost, another is because undocumented immigration has been profitable by providing corporations third world labor costs within first world borders. I'll have to think over it. But yeah, leftists don't get nationalism or its importance. That's the irony: they rail against corporations with no national loyalty, then dismiss nationalists and conflate every one of their concerns with racism. They reject the only counter-force who have a vested interest in their nation, against those who have interests beyond nations - trans-national elites. The issue is that a whole bunch of racists are part of that group too.

Border has the word order in it - but the order of the past differs to the order of today which there are new incentives for. Incentives primarily drive actions while ideology justify it - if the actions being taken based on those incentives don't look good, it's ideologies purpose to make them look good. This is why we're told that these raids and deportations are being done for ''nationalism'' and ''security'' = national security. Whilst that has elements of truth and validness, its not the key driver. In the US where profit is King, everything else becomes its servant. Racist ethno-nationalists ideologues jumping on this bandwagon is secondary to the primary driver being the profit motive. Illegality isn't objective but conditional on profitability. When undocumented immigrants served a profitable function, their "illegality" was tolerated - now that they cease to serve a profitable function to the same extent - suddenly their illegality is a liability looking for a way to be monetized. In the past, legality didn't matter because profit sanitized illegality. Today, illegality is weaponized for revenue. Legality is simply a selective tool serving profit and power, not a principle applied universally. In 2025 - automation, AI, reshoring without labor, and rising political instability make that labor force less economically useful and more socially expendable. At the same time, the rise of the carceral-surveillance economy created new ways to monetize enforcement through deportation quotas, detention centers, tech surveillance, and federal contracts. The same system that once profited from their presence now profits from their removal. The cost-benefit equation has shifted: See:

It's best to view the state not as a actor but a broker for elite interests. Politics is noise, profit and power are the signal. Chat GPT summary: Organized Summary & Analysis: State Capture and the Illusion of American Democracy 1. Democracy as Illusion: The speaker opens with a brutal paradox: Americans vote in a democracy on election day but spend most of their lives inside authoritarian structures, particularly in the private sector. Offices, companies, and corporations are not democratic spaces. In fact, they are "democracy-free zones" where the principles of representation and accountability are absent. The workplace, where people spend two-thirds of their waking lives, is effectively a dictatorship. Best Quote: "You punch in at work, you punch out of your democracy." 2. Private Sector Supremacy and State Capture: Over time, the American state has ceded more and more control to the private sector, which has now effectively captured it. The result is a government that acts less like a public servant and more like a broker for private interests. This is described as a "stack of authoritarianisms" nested inside each other—corporations within monopolies within financial behemoths. Best Quote: "Congress is nothing but the customer service desk for the Fortune 500." 3. Thorium Example: Missed Opportunities for Humanity: The abandonment of thorium-based nuclear energy in favor of more weaponizable uranium highlights how military-industrial interests override human advancement. China's progress in this space is contrasted with the U.S.'s retreat, not because of technical limitations but because thorium could not be easily weaponized. Best Quote: "If it couldn't facilitate war and killing, it was deprioritized." 4. Privatization of Immigration Enforcement: The speaker argues that ICE has become a corporate arm of private prison contractors, functioning not as law enforcement but as a profit-generating logistics operation. Immigration enforcement is not about law but commerce, and each arrest or deportation is a financial transaction. Best Quote: "ICE is not a law enforcement agency. It's a mercenary force under contract to private corporations." 5. Expansion Beyond Immigrants: The speaker warns that the apparatus being normalized against immigrants will inevitably be expanded to target other vulnerable populations: the poor, minorities, protesters, and political dissidents. Surveillance infrastructure, AI raids, and detention centers are described as pre-fascist architecture. Best Quote: "This isn't just a pilot project. It's a supply chain." 6. Corporate Logic Driving Policy: Investor briefings celebrate deportation orders. Stocks rise with every new detention center. The entire immigration system has become a monetized business model, incentivizing human suffering and undermining the moral foundation of law. Best Quote: "Respecting rights is financially inefficient. Violating dignity is now incentivized." 7. State Has Abdicated: This is not just corruption. It is capture. The state has fully abdicated its monopoly on legitimate violence and handed it over to private interests. It is no longer governing—it is facilitating corporate domination. Best Quote: "Deregulation is just the state regulating its own abdication." 8. America as a Captured State: What remains of the state is described as a "brand," not a real body politic. Like Rome before its fall, the U.S. is using privatized mercenaries to manage domestic unrest. The result is the hollowing out of legitimacy and the normalization of emergency repression as governance. Best Quote: "You're being policed by marauders and mercenaries." 9. International Legitimacy Lost: The United States is no longer seen as a moral leader. Its violations of international law, inhumane detention practices, and erosion of legal norms have destroyed its soft power globally. Best Quote: "Your whole brand is tarnished. America can never again call itself the beacon of liberty." 10. Call to Action and Moral Clarity: Finally, the speaker calls for resistance, warning that silence or inaction is complicity. The system currently targeting immigrants will eventually target everyone. The moral high ground belongs to those who resist, expose, and protect. Best Quote: "If you're not resisting, you're colluding. If you're not protecting them, you're rehearsing for when no one protects you." Conclusion: This is not a hyperbolic rant, but a structural critique of a system in late-stage neoliberal collapse. It presents a chilling but grounded diagnosis: the American state has been fully captured by private capital, and its institutions now function to maximize profit through domination. The capture is complete, the moral framework of governance is dead, and the only thing that remains is resistance—or submission.

Statesmen are ruthless, tyrants are evil - yet both have power. Power is leverage - the ability to shape others without being shaped. Some forms of leverage are cleaner or dirtier than others. Power dynamics require compromises - but there’s a difference between strategic compromise and moral surrender to the dark side. If power is the engine, principle is the steering. Easier said than done.

You’ll love these two vids, best listened to at 1.25x speed. From the past: To the present: The second video is especially comprehensive and prophetic of what’s occurring today. For the most part, a pretty on point and devastating analysis, not without its flaws. The right isn't wholly wrong about pointing out certain issues and even facts around those issues. They often claim they're all about “facts over feelings”. The issues come with their narrative around those facts, that their feelings inform. They’re feelings rationalise around those facts, to affirm their own prejudices. They take real patterns that may be observable (such as over-representation of x group in crime, poverty etc) and then pathologize those groups as innately inferior. When their own group show up in statistics or do wrong, they exceptionalize them as individual anomalies to maintain their own sense of superiority - otherwise known as American exceptionalism. They turn circumstance into a condition. Systemic circumstances can cause certain conditions - that force people to live within the limits of those conditions. They de-contextualise in order to essentialise - attributing wrongdoing in behavior to the inherent nature or essence of that out-group. On the other hand: the tendency of the left is to sanitise and individualise instead of pathologise and generalise. At their best they fear acknowledging harsh truths because they fear those truths energising the far right who will mis-use them to justify injustices. At their worst, they fear facing the reality of survival and power dynamics that counters their own idea of human goodness. Realities of survival and power dynamics threatens the lefts moral framework because they haven’t synthesized the ideals of principles - with the realities of power and survival. They either deny those realities or have an incorrect relationship to it - the most extreme political manifestation being communism. The right understand and mis-use realpolitik, the left don’t accommodate reality into their own politik - because the cold reality of nature puts into question their view of nature being good. The physical nature of power isn’t good by default - the concept of good doesn’t even exist in that plane. It’s just raw and neutral - only becoming good when nurtured by principles from the non-physical plane of the soul. Civilization is about buffering the reality of power with the conscience of principles.

It needs a re-structuring where the state controls capital rather than capital controlling the state. Capital and private individuals naturally have shorter time horizons than states who have longer time horizions ie can invest in their own country and reap benefits in decades. A deeper structural issue at play is financialization from which outgrew a financial elite who are then incentivised to speculate rather than produce, extract rather than create. No political solution will fix a non-political issue that is mostly a monetary one. As long as the value and buying power of money keeps eroding, we're chasing a phantom with politics. Left vs right, culture wars, redistribution vs austerity are mainly symptoms. The core disease is money no longer being tethered to real value. That's why your below point about productivity gains not being seen. When companies can buy back their own stocks to inflate their assets, they don't need to invest in the ground workers of the company itself, or compensate them for the value that's been funneled to the top. Moneys made by moving money around in the financial domain, not earned or invested in reality where real value lies. It doesn't have enough resources for its own people otherwise it would have a welfare system like Europe - which is also under pressure now. If it can't provide for its own people how can it provide for people coming in. On the other hand it does have resources, but yet pretends it's broke every time it’s asked to share them - because those resources are held hostage by the financial elite - frankenstein vampires born from financialization. In this sense, the US isn't actually sovereign. It's a host state and platform that elite interests work THROUGH, rather than under and in the service of. The solution isn't communism though, but elements of it. A hybrid system that is good at growing the pie via capitalist principles, but also sharing it via socialist principles. Getting state control back from capital is a whole other discussion.

Sounds like Switzerland - there's a new train to be built direct from London To Geneva - pretty sick. I'll never forget the 1st time I took the Eurostar and came out in Paris in 2hrs, just so cool. https://www.forbes.com/sites/everettpotter/2025/05/16/london-to-switzerland-via--a-direct-train-by-2030/ Europe needs the Ukraine war to end, get cheap energy back online with Nord stream to bring down energy costs, then re-focus on building and economic growth via tech so it's not left behind by the US/China and so it can maintain its welfare system which is coming under massive pressure from a aging population + low growth + more dependents from excess migration which needs clamping down. Yeah bro, they aren't squeaky clean but then again few places are. Its a newly developed city and they've evolved with more regulation and rights for workers now so things are in the right direction. A lot of them from Pakistan/India/Philippines would be struggling to feed their families in their weaker economies which is why they have the highest remittance rates from the gulf - in the billions being sent back home. Same for the US migrants sending to South American countries. That's the hardship of survival. Difference is that the US has had a hand in de-stabilizing and weakening latin economies which drive migrants north in the first place. UAE's moral failings and flaws are local and more visible, whilst the West's are global and invisible. Our tax money has gone to feed the meat grinder of middle eastern wars like Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and now the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. It's a different scale all together. Gotta pick our posions. Lot of money is concentrated in Dubai just like London, New York or Switzerland. But it's actually not too bad in comparison and there is a variety of lifestyles. For example - 1 bed London apartment in a centralish but not prime location is about £1.8k excluding bills. In Dubai for the same price you'd get amenities like concierge/reception, gym, parking - and with more space in a slightly more central location (10 min walk to the beach). A equivalent new build with all that in London would be £2.5k minimum. Then you add in that your income is tax free and you save all this money you would have otherwise paid in tax back home - you can just use a portion of that saving to be in Europe for the summer and avoid the Dubai heat at its worst. That's the ideal I think - enjoy old world charm of Europe, futuristic luxury of Dubai, spiritually grounded and raw nature in Thailand/Bali which is an easy flight form Dubai in the off season. Best of everything. Dubai isn't just flash though, it has really sick mountains and hikes, deserts camping/bbq's and activities.

Mainly Europeans have been trying to wipe Jews* off the map for centuries. Can’t wipe Israel when it didn’t exist. If referring to Jews in Middle East - yes , they faced discrimination (not mass elimination) but were largely a protected group rather than a persecuted one with pogroms like in Europe. Extremist stances today largely stem from occupation and dispossession, not racism and discrimination.

Leo prob gonna get Greta as a mod once she’s out. Western media made her persona non-Greta once she went for the jugular.

@Joshe True, perhaps those who aren't spiritually fulfilled and whole are all looking for adoration or to be seen - and seeking it through different means. Maybe there's a distinction between social dominance (energy) and mental dominance (entrepreneurship). Trump dominates people by instinct, Elon dominates problems by intellect. Elon has a vision, and will dominate his way to it as a builder, he's obsessive. Trump lacks one, except that he should be glorious, he is the vision - he sells himself whilst building nothing of real value. But Trump has a dominating energy that Elon doesn't, except that he has a dominating mindset. Trump walking into a room shifts the energy and pulls people in, Elon walks into a room and attracts people to his mind and ideas. Trump makes people feel (polarized for sure, good or bad), Elon makes people think. The combination of both is rare - true philosopher king types. Barack Obama came close, Putin also but much colder and suited to the Russian temperament. This isn't about us agreeing to their politics or philosophies (visions), only that they have substantive visions they've sold their people on, unlike Trumps more shallow one. Elon doesn't embody confidence - dominance like Trump. He's in his head with his mind racing about everything and the future, he's in the future and trying to build it. Compared to Trump who is present, just speaking his mind shamelessly with no tip of the tongue moments or awkwardness. Perhaps Elon didn't see that slap coming from Donny who's present while the he's star gazing: Both are dads but Trumps daddy coolio. See his two fingers on Elons elbow establishing dominance. To showcase dominant energy in even a short king, see Putin strut: Shawty smoother and more embodied than Elon jumping on stage.

Its's home as born and raised, relations and work here. Though moving Dubai soon - as are plenty from here. Nothing like London though - the city is electric, but quality of life has gone down and prospects aren't looking good. Dubai's not perfect but works for short-medium term: sun (productivity boost), taxes to stack cash, cosmopolitan (international), safe, proximity to Asia which I love. Got friends in HK/China I'll be travelling to more often from there - will send you propaganda postcards from China x European life still beats anywhere else on average. Your in Europe?

This is a great macro overview of BRICS place in the world, the shift in power taking place and where things are headed: Summarized notes from Chat GPT: - Traditional geopolitics fixates on nation-states and alliances. That’s the stage. We want the script. We analyze who has real power - states, corporations, asset managers, or networks. Real analysis demands we look beyond surface theatrics. - The Relative power index (RPI) was built to measure real, functional leverage. Not military parades or fake GDP, but authority, resilience, immunity, and dependence. Real power is the ability to shape outcomes without being shaped in return. - The US still has power, but it’s not for itself. It’s the enforcement arm of financialized capital. It’s not sovereign, it’s a host. Its true rulers are transnational owners of global capital. The US is being decommissioned by the very elites it once served. - BlackRock has more power over America than Congress does. BlackRock is a private sovereign. It controls capital, influences policy, and cannot be meaningfully retaliated against. - BRICS is rising, not just symbolically but functionally. Not just rhetorically but through structural dominance. BRICS will control inputs, withstand retaliation, and offer narrative legitimacy through partnership, not imperialism. - BRICS can't retaliate decisively against Blackrock, but controls what it needs - resources, labor, markets. BlackRock can’t function without BRICS, while BRICS can increasingly walk away. The system is shifting. Irrelevance is the defeat BlackRock will suffer. - By 2050, BRICS won’t be asking for validation - they will be the ones offering it. The Wests authority will be symbolic. The real world will be built elsewhere - among sovereign civilizations rooted in truth, partnership, and resilience. You don’t need to defeat empire. You just need to make it irrelevant.

It can be good to get a frame of reference to what it feels like to be socially loose - which then makes it easier to access that state. But the key is to not let it become a crutch to access that same state of looseness and confidence. Also can help bond with people as they feel your both becoming “vulnerable” together by having a drink. If it’s just the other person drinking and you’ve only just met them they may feel weird about it - unless you have the confidence and frame to make it a nothingburger. But alcohol sucks for health and if you have an addictive personality then it’s not worth even touching. There are work arounds if you don’t want to feel awkward at a bar without a drink - just get sparkling water/club soda with lime and it looks like a gin and tonic. You can also tell your date your already feeling good / buzzed from something else and don’t wanna ruin it with a drink - zynns, weed, or say you took a saffron supplement which is known to help with mood and vibes. Just has to be done confidently.