Is the US now at war with Iran? (US vs. Iran Discussion)

[Twentyfirst]

3 hours ago, BlueOak said:

This is incorrect.

Human rights:

UK: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/contents
USA: https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-hrsp/file/1002896/dl

Women's Rights:
UK: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/22/crossheading/protection-of-women
USA: This is an ongoing fight since the 60's
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_Act_(United_States)

International Law:

https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-and-mechanisms/international-human-rights-law

Man made ego bullshit

Wake up

[Apparition of Jack]

9 minutes ago, Twentyfirst said:

Man made ego bullshit

Wake up

I’m sorry, but there are very real differences in the level of social development between countries, it’s not “reactionary” to point that out.

Of course, all societies have good and bad, and if you just want a simple life of fishing and drinking hooch vs grinding your whole life you’d probably do better in some Filipino fishing village than New York, but on the whole the Philippines just has way more crime, corruption, poverty, murder, sex trafficking etc than the US does.

Be careful not to flatten differences too much in the quest to make everything “equal.” Third world countries need to engage in serious developmental reform if they want to break the poverty trap.

[Apparition of Jack]

I’ll put it this way. If you’re:

- gay

- a woman

- trans

- effeminate 

- socially avant-garde

- worldly/liberal/progressive 

etc etc.

then you’d be far, far safer in the West than you would be basically anywhere else. Even new powers like China still have massive problems with racism, homophobia, etc. 
 

This isn’t just some liberal talking point either; in absolute terms the number of people migrating from the Global South to the Global North just utterly dwarfs the opposite. People want to move to Western countries because their own countries are riddled with crime, corruption, poverty, drug abuse, etc. Despite the bad wrap the West gets (a lot of it deserved tbh), it is still, for billions of people around the world, an democratic “safe haven” and an aspirational model of what prosperous, stable societies look like. Third world countries shouldn’t be demonised, like I said every society has its good points, but neither should we encourage them to overlook their multitude of shortcomings that still harm the lives of countless of their citizens.

Edited June 30 by Apparition of Jack

[Twentyfirst]

58 minutes ago, Apparition of Jack said:

I’m sorry, but there are very real differences in the level of social development between countries, it’s not “reactionary” to point that out.

Of course, all societies have good and bad, and if you just want a simple life of fishing and drinking hooch vs grinding your whole life you’d probably do better in some Filipino fishing village than New York, but on the whole the Philippines just has way more crime, corruption, poverty, murder, sex trafficking etc than the US does.

Be careful not to flatten differences too much in the quest to make everything “equal.” Third world countries need to engage in serious developmental reform if they want to break the poverty trap.

Are you sure that isn't about cities vs nature? There are probably places in upstate New York that are much safer than alleyways in New York City

Is Wall Street not so corrupt that the effects can be felt nation and worldwide?

What is 3rd world? The rich American who remembers that you owe him a slice of pizza and demands you return the favor vs the Filipino kid in flip flops that gives you the only toy he has?

[Twentyfirst]

1 hour ago, Apparition of Jack said:

I’ll put it this way. If you’re:

- gay

- a woman

- trans

- effeminate 

- socially avant-garde

- worldly/liberal/progressive 

etc etc.

A lot of these are just 0.1 percent of the population 

Women are fine everywhere. Really. In the West they are treated like sex toys. Idk how many times I have to say it

There are liberals in major cities everywhere. Bangkok has liberals and you drive out into the country and there are not many liberals

Quote

then you’d be far, far safer in the West than you would be basically anywhere else. Even new powers like China still have massive problems with racism, homophobia, etc. 
 

But if you are in China you are Chinese so how can they be racist towards you? 

If you are a tourist in China they will treat you different than their own but tourists are treated differently than locals in the USA too

Watch an Eddie Murphy comedy show from a few decades ago and he makes fun of gays and everyone is disgusted by them. The West only now accepted gays and they still haven't figured it out. Lots of fighting still

Quote

This isn’t just some liberal talking point either; in absolute terms the number of people migrating from the Global South to the Global North just utterly dwarfs the opposite. People want to move to Western countries because their own countries are riddled with crime, corruption, poverty, drug abuse, etc. Despite the bad wrap the West gets (a lot of it deserved tbh), it is still, for billions of people around the world, an democratic “safe haven” and an aspirational model of what prosperous, stable societies look like. Third world countries shouldn’t be demonised, like I said every society has its good points, but neither should we encourage them to overlook their multitude of shortcomings that still harm the lives of countless of their citizens.

Yeah because the West stole from all those countries. Why else is Africa the poorest when it has the richest resources and Europe the most lavish when it has little resources? The west halts development for all these places, installs puppet leaders that will steal from their own people which halts development, and then these people have no choice but to migrate. Ask all the immigrants or immigrant parents if they would rather live in their birth country or the west. They don't move to the west for democracy because nobody actually believes in that and definitely not culture. They move there for the economy

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/04/british-museum-is-worlds-largest-receiver-of-stolen-goods-says-qc

So if it was reversed and the economy shifts and all the westerners want to move to the global south what would that mean? That the south has better human rights?

 

 

Edited June 30 by Twentyfirst

[BlueOak]

2 hours ago, Twentyfirst said:

Man made ego bullshit

All laws are man made. Society is man made. Most of the world you interact with is man made.

[Twentyfirst]

21 minutes ago, BlueOak said:

All laws are man made. Society is man made. Most of the world you interact with is man made.

Exactly 

So why are the West man made laws better than the other 87% of the worlds man made laws

Unless you think the Wests people are inherently superior by nature?

[BlueOak]

54 minutes ago, Twentyfirst said:

Exactly 

So why are the West man made laws better than the other 87% of the worlds man made laws

Unless you think the Wests people are inherently superior by nature?

Where on earth have I said any of that? Uncharacteristically, I've said very little in these posts so far.

1, I loathe the term: 'The West' on a personal level, even more so in this context, as laws are specific to each country and often region within those countries. I use the term 'the west' as others like to, and it saves time. However, you are twice wrong here, as there are international laws on human rights, but I digress.

2,  As I am not sure how you intend to prove or disprove the superiority of a person, and frankly don't want to find out. Let's look at the superiority of a law instead, if you want to go down that road. I didn't, I was merely stating you were wrong, but let's take a minute.

Given laws are based upon the populations they apply to, and enforced by the state which governs them, they have to best represent that population, while being actionable by the state.

In as in as much as a law can be considered superior to another law from a different country, those are the metrics i'd use. Your assumption that 0.1% of the population is gay is simply untrue. Generally, the level of homosexuality in a population of mammals naturally rises and falls with the availability of breeding partners and level of food, while we can and do override nature in many ways, what I am implying is its dynamic.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/lgbtq-population-by-country

You are looking anywhere from 5-15%, which is within norms to my understanding, though I can cite specific scientific examples if we need more clarity. So these laws you are referring to need to account for 5-15% of the population, and in western countries that lean toward equality, or at least meritocracy, rather than hierarchy, the laws are naturally structured to better fit minority inclusion. In an autocracy, laws on equality and human rights are diminished as individual people matter less, their vote or opinion matters less, the stability of those countries is reinforced by having less equality, and suppression is very high, whereas in a democracy, it's the opposite.

Edited June 30 by BlueOak

[BlueOak]

Part of my hatred toward the current state of the world is the autocracies are trying to do what America did to them, impose their own values over countries which are not them. Regime change in reverse.

I hated America for doing it. I hate Israel now for doing it.
I hate China, Russia and BRICS generally for doing it.

[Twentyfirst]

1 hour ago, BlueOak said:

Where on earth have I said any of that? Uncharacteristically, I've said very little in these posts so far.

1, I loathe the term: 'The West' on a personal level, even more so in this context, as laws are specific to each country and often region within those countries. I use the term 'the west' as others like to, and it saves time. However, you are twice wrong here, as there are international laws on human rights, but I digress.

2,  As I am not sure how you intend to prove or disprove the superiority of a person, and frankly don't want to find out. Let's look at the superiority of a law instead, if you want to go down that road. I didn't, I was merely stating you were wrong, but let's take a minute.

Given laws are based upon the populations they apply to, and enforced by the state which governs them, they have to best represent that population, while being actionable by the state.

In as in as much as a law can be considered superior to another law from a different country, those are the metrics i'd use. Your assumption that 0.1% of the population is gay is simply untrue. Generally, the level of homosexuality in a population of mammals naturally rises and falls with the availability of breeding partners and level of food, while we can and do override nature in many ways, what I am implying is its dynamic.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/lgbtq-population-by-country

You are looking anywhere from 5-15%, which is within norms to my understanding, though I can cite specific scientific examples if we need more clarity. So these laws you are referring to need to account for 5-15% of the population, and in western countries that lean toward equality, or at least meritocracy, rather than hierarchy, the laws are naturally structured to better fit minority inclusion. In an autocracy, laws on equality and human rights are diminished as individual people matter less, their vote or opinion matters less, the stability of those countries is reinforced by having less equality, and suppression is very high, whereas in a democracy, it's the opposite.

I was saying 0.1 percent mostly for the trans thing

There is NO WAY that there are 15 percent of the population who are gay. That's ridiculous. Even 5 percent is too much. I think those 5 percent most of them are experimenting then they go back to hetero 

Democratic countries are not equality friendly. They just claim they are. You have to be awake to see it which isn't hard since it's so obvious. Listen people in these countries are under extreme amounts of propaganda. Why do you think in the most "equal" countries in the world they treat brown people like animals that should be slaughtered. Just think for one minute 

There is no minority inclusion. For example black people are considered a minority in America yet there are more black people in the world than there are white people. The only reason the west needs minority inclusion is because they have such a violent and hateful history towards minorities 

There are no diminishment of individual peoples in non democratic countries. It's all bullshit you were fed since u were a thoughtless kid and now you don't know anything else 

[BlueOak]

5 hours ago, Twentyfirst said:

I was saying 0.1 percent mostly for the trans thing

There is NO WAY that there are 15 percent of the population who are gay. That's ridiculous. Even 5 percent is too much. I think those 5 percent most of them are experimenting then they go back to hetero 

Democratic countries are not equality friendly. They just claim they are. You have to be awake to see it which isn't hard since it's so obvious. Listen people in these countries are under extreme amounts of propaganda. Why do you think in the most "equal" countries in the world they treat brown people like animals that should be slaughtered. Just think for one minute 

There is no minority inclusion. For example black people are considered a minority in America yet there are more black people in the world than there are white people. The only reason the west needs minority inclusion is because they have such a violent and hateful history towards minorities 

There are no diminishment of individual peoples in non democratic countries. It's all bullshit you were fed since u were a thoughtless kid and now you don't know anything else 

Animal Same Sex Statistics and percentage examples
https://www.thoughtco.com/homosexuality-in-animals-4164365
https://blog.animalogic.ca/wild/why-do-some-animals-exhibit-homosexual-behaviour - Along with some extended reasoning of why.

I'd say 15% is the extreme certainly, but in my opinion it largely depends on the acceptance of homosexuality as to how honest people are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation
15% in San Francisco for example, where it is widely accepted.

This rise in homosexuality that people talk about is down to two things. The natural drives of the species over generations, food/available mates, and the ability to be honest safely.

More democratic countries strive for equality; they have to because that's how their governments remain legitimised, which requires the inclusion of many minorities for stability
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu

After Trump's recent policies, i'd put America further down this list above. Into a more authoritarian rating. Directly related to their treatment of minorities. Black people are still a minority in America, not a small one granted. 14.4% according to this:

https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/fact-sheet/facts-about-the-us-black-population/

No country is a perfect democracy, certainly, and America has been sliding into fascism for many years now. They do not treat brown people like 'animals' in England. There is certainly racism, but the push for equality and/or meritocracy is what sets these countries apart. The very fact we are talking about the pushback against racism or gender inequality in democracies is the point I am making. It exists; I can point to examples of it on mass. Whereas in authoritarian regimes, this is much more suppressed.

You are welcome to your opinion on authoritarian countries. Every example I see of them is horrific. They've done nothing these last years but reinforce this belief. 

Edited July 1 by BlueOak

[BlueOak]

Oh and your examples of 'propaganda' are belief systems which differ from yours. Reinforced by the society, education, institutions, etc, of those countries. Ditto every country on earth.

Edited July 1 by BlueOak

[Twentyfirst]

4 hours ago, BlueOak said:

Animal Same Sex Statistics and percentage examples
https://www.thoughtco.com/homosexuality-in-animals-4164365
https://blog.animalogic.ca/wild/why-do-some-animals-exhibit-homosexual-behaviour - Along with some extended reasoning of why.

I'd say 15% is the extreme certainly, but in my opinion it largely depends on the acceptance of homosexuality as to how honest people are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation
15% in San Francisco for example, where it is widely accepted.

This rise in homosexuality that people talk about is down to two things. The natural drives of the species over generations, food/available mates, and the ability to be honest safely.

More democratic countries strive for equality; they have to because that's how their governments remain legitimised, which requires the inclusion of many minorities for stability
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu

After Trump's recent policies, i'd put America further down this list above. Into a more authoritarian rating. Directly related to their treatment of minorities. Black people are still a minority in America, not a small one granted. 14.4% according to this:

https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/fact-sheet/facts-about-the-us-black-population/

No country is a perfect democracy, certainly, and America has been sliding into fascism for many years now. They do not treat brown people like 'animals' in England. There is certainly racism, but the push for equality and/or meritocracy is what sets these countries apart. The very fact we are talking about the pushback against racism or gender inequality in democracies is the point I am making. It exists; I can point to examples of it on mass. Whereas in authoritarian regimes, this is much more suppressed.

You are welcome to your opinion on authoritarian countries. Every example I see of them is horrific. They've done nothing these last years but reinforce this belief. 

I don't care what studies you have. There are not that many homos in the world. I know from real life experience 

Look on Twitter after Musk bought it. All the racism that was simmering below the surface has come out and it's all from white democratic citizens

There is no democratic, facist, or authoritarian regimes. It's just the West using these terms to steal from people. Notice how everyone the Western leaders hate automatically has a system that is "corrupt" and a leader that is "crazy". Do you think Kim Jong wakes up in bed and says "another day of being a dictator". He just sees himself as a leader and it doesn't matter what some racist country outside labels it as. Do you think Russian citizens see themselves as citizens of an authoritarian regime? They probably don't even know or care what that word means

Edited July 1 by Twentyfirst

[BlueOak]

3 hours ago, Twentyfirst said:

I don't care what studies you have. There are not that many homos in the world. I know from real life experience 

Look on Twitter after Musk bought it. All the racism that was simmering below the surface has come out and it's all from white democratic citizens

There is no democratic, facist, or authoritarian regimes. It's just the West using these terms to steal from people. Notice how everyone the Western leaders hate automatically has a system that is "corrupt" and a leader that is "crazy". Do you think Kim Jong wakes up in bed and says "another day of being a dictator". He just sees himself as a leader and it doesn't matter what some racist country outside labels it as. Do you think Russian citizens see themselves as citizens of an authoritarian regime? They probably don't even know or care what that word means

I'll go with the data on this one. It's better than my own personal experience or yours.

America is sliding more into suppression and racism, yes. People are self-interested, yes, and a percentage are racist to achieve it. The difference again is in a democracy, the minorities by necessity and design are represented, while in an autocracy, it's entirely optional and often designed to suppress them. Racism doesn't evaporate, but it is addressed by design.

What an individual sees himself as, I have no control over. I only have control over my own perception.

We use labels as a means of identifying something for the purposes of conversation and cooperation.

I could list the themes of fascism and links for them, but as you don't like links, labels, or examples, we cannot have a common ground. We might as well be yelling random words at each other. That's why common definitions and labels exist. 

Edited July 1 by BlueOak

[Twentyfirst]

5 hours ago, BlueOak said:

I'll go with the data on this one. It's better than my own personal experience or yours.

America is sliding more into suppression and racism, yes. People are self-interested, yes, and a percentage are racist to achieve it. The difference again is in a democracy, the minorities by necessity and design are represented, while in an autocracy, it's entirely optional and often designed to suppress them. Racism doesn't evaporate, but it is addressed by design.

What an individual sees himself as, I have no control over. I only have control over my own perception.

We use labels as a means of identifying something for the purposes of conversation and cooperation.

I could list the themes of fascism and links for them, but as you don't like links, labels, or examples, we cannot have a common ground. We might as well be yelling random words at each other. That's why common definitions and labels exist. 

One day you will see all this an unnecessary. America is too political and divided and it creates all these unnecessary problems and unnecessary solutions and it becomes a soup of slop  

[BlueOak]

12 hours ago, Twentyfirst said:

One day you will see all this an unnecessary. America is too political and divided and it creates all these unnecessary problems and unnecessary solutions and it becomes a soup of slop  

Multiparty systems where I live do not suffer from the same degree of polarisations or succumb to authoritarian influence as easily, because either someone just starts a new party or one of the existing ones rises up. The upheaval comes because authoritarian values are being forced upon a population that doesn't want them and worse has a lot of minorities that require representationn. The dual system in America alongside its corporate nature, is vulnerable to one party being bought out. The horrific thing is, America is forced to do not only a regime change but also start deporting people to fit this new authoritarian mold.

So no I won't be appreciating this change any time soon. We've lost an ally, and i've seen a country I once respected slide back 50 years.
 

[zazen]

On 25/06/2025 at 10:06 PM, Jodistrict said:

Towards the end (42.30) he says that the US will invade Iran.  There is no way that’s going to happen.   The US couldn’t even subdue Afghanistan after 20 years and is deeply in debt.   Trump has already pulled back and says he is not seeking regime change.

He is right in the first half.  Workers had a higher standard of living before the manufacturing was transferred to China making the globalists trillionaires thanks to labor arbitrage.  That is the impulse behind the creation of MAGA – people started noticing that their politicians aren’t listening to anything they say anymore and people can no longer afford to have children.   So who is the government serving?  It’s not the people.  It’s the controllers of financial capital.

I agree. Before I was looking at the driving force of the state from the lens of capital - after this professors videos I would conclude that there is also a empire logic at play in driving the state - though they usually work in conjunction. This professor over-weights the logic of empire wanting to maintain primacy, against the logic of capital wanting to maintain stable profits.

A framework I've come to is that there are 4 pillars / domains that make up power:

- People ( Nation state, the masses seeking the good life) Offer empire and capital legitimacy.

- Primacy ( Empire state, the muscle seeking primacy on the world stage ) National security / deep state military elites ie NSA, CIA, FBI

- Profit ( Capital-cloud estate, money seeking profits ) Wall Street / tech elites ie Blackrock, Big Tech

- Prophecy ( Religious or secular, ideology seeking meaning ) Moral cover / justification weaponised by empire and capital.

Empire's primacy and capital's profits are served at the expense of the nation states people - hence as you said ''people started noticing that their politicians aren’t listening to anything they say anymore'' and so we have the rise of populism across the West. The ideological buy in for empire behaving imperially (American exceptionalism) and capital behaving extractively (Capitalism) no longer hold meaning for most people.

Foreign policy is written in board rooms (capital) and war rooms (empire), and later justified in newsrooms (ideology). Social media is shredding the narrative control of empire and capital - who are then losing legitimacy among their own masses, let alone those it has already dominated abroad.

The way capital and empire work together is that capital profits from access (to markets, regions, resources) whilst empire (muscle-military dominance) ensures favourable access (SWIFT, petro-dollar primacy). Capital runs on empires guardrails. Capital plays on the gameboard that empire has built for it - to be in a position of primacy from which it can be extractive. Empire fires shots so that capital can call the shots. This has been the status quo for the past decades during pax-Americana.

That status quo is now changing with the rise of peer rivals and a new game board being constructed by the likes of China, Russia, Iran (BRICS etc). So primacy and uni-polar hegemony is threatened, and with it, the position of primacy from which capital could dictate terms to favor itself and extract from others as predator rather than partner. Capital wealth is denominated in dollars and dependent on market access - both of which are threatened by those who want to de-dollarize by trading in local currencies and make access conditional.

Up to now, Empire muscle has been enforcing and tilting the game board in its favor in much of the world, by enforcing or coercing access for its capital elites (corporations, hedge/vulture funds). But now they are up against the last man standing in the Middle East who has historically denied them access (nationalization of oil followed by a CIA backed coup) and continues to do so: Iran. Luckily, Iran is a proud civilisational state that is a geographic fortress, overlooks strategic choke points and has enough muscle to deter aggression - unlike its neighbors who have been de-stabilized and subjugated to the empire. It’s also co-architecting the new game board being built by China and Russia which de-dollarizes trade and calls for sovereignty over subjugation.

So the tension arises between empire and capital - empire says ''we can't lose out to the new game in town'' whilst capital says ''but this could risk annihilation or exclusion from the game entirely - disrupting everything we've built''. Empire wants to strong arm the last defiant example in the Middle East to concede to its terms and not engage in building a new game (with BRICS) that disrupts the game they dominate in. Capital wants to deal make partial access even if it means concessions their arrogance isn't used to - rather than risk total exclusion or annihilation ie game over. They see a negotiated partial access under multi-polarity as a game still worth playing, over a total extractive access that risks ending the game entirely.

The reality is that empire has met its match in muscle whilst losing its narrative control over the masses it needs to sell their actions to. Any wrong moves at this stage expedite its decline from within (people uprising against empire - populism) and from without (nations banding together against imperial belligerence) as we've already see happening with Trumps tariff game which is just another mechanism of attempting to maintain primacy by offsetting the costs of empire.

What is most likely to happen is a slow decline in relative power against new powers rising in a multi-polar world, and the US empire and capital elites learning to come to terms with not being the ones to always set the terms in the new world.

 

Edited July 2 by zazen

[zazen]

Interesting videos covering each of the power factions listed above:

Empire - national security - deep state elite:

Capital - financial elite:

 

Cloud - tech elite:

Professor just dropped a video which is in line with how I laid out the factions in the previous comment:

He ended by mentioning that according to game theory, a dominant players strategy becomes clearer - and in reaction to this a new player emerges to with a counter strategy against the game being played.

He mentions Putin as a Ubermensch that disrupts or challenges this game and changes history with it - which he is going to go into in his next video. The dominant player or force driving changes according to him today is Christian Zionism.

As I wrote in the previous comment, it’s simply that new player(s) have emerged, not just Putin but Xi Jinpings China which he overlooks. They simply want their own autonomy and place in the world (multipolar) rather than the US wanting the whole world (Uni-polar). They are challenging US empire primacy and Western capitals ability to dictate terms.

 Perhaps he doesn’t account for China too much because Russia is currently the one most visibly challenging the current game via proxy war in Ukraine, but that doesn’t mean China isn’t synergised with Russia in countering the Western built and dominated game board.