The US is bound to lose and the Empire, like all empires before it, will collapse. All we can hope for that this collapse will occur before all of us collapse.
There is zero chance the US collapse doesn't affect billions of people because of how interconnected the global economy is. That said, I am still hoping for it because it's what is needed to change the power dynamic of civilization once and for all.
China will, of course, do fine and rise from the ashes of the collapse of Western Civilization to become the next world's superpower. And in the end, Donald Trump will forever be known as the man who made it all happen.
The American government hasn’t turned over since Kennedy was assassinated. Even then it was a potential change of government that was nipped in the bud.
Absolutely! Most people can’t or won’t acknowledge that because they want to see it like a sporting event—red team vs blue team. Some of the smartest people I know indulge in that narrative, but I totally agree with you.
Absolutely right. Short-term governments indulge in short-term thinking, sometimes it barely qualifies as thinking, to suit election cycles. A problem in many countries.
Just look at China and Iran. One is technically Islamic, and the other communist, but what they funtionally are under the lid are buraucratic monoliths. Solid, stable (compared to liberal democracies), and with the momentum to bring huge swathes of people from agrarian lifestyles into modern industrial as well as post-industrial societies within the span of a few generations, and they're not slowing down. Iran impreses me the most, because they achieved all that despite the Immoral ire of America. I know many Westerners typically don't like the fact they have built their state around Islam, but the material effect it has had is that their state and culture now sits on beauracratic systems that have been refined over literal millenia. Contemporary China gets it's same advantage from it's own millenia old lineage in much the same way.
The cultural equivalents of patient and wise elders waiting for the grandchildren to exhaust themselves in a tantrum.
The collapse of the western empire began after WW2, when the US military industrial complex and the CIA took over from the British empire. Since then it has fought many wars and removed governments from power, and destroyed some once thriving countries, such as Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Despite the seemingly unending expansion and wars of the US and Israel, they are both doomed to fail as the rest of the world turns against them and their highly indebted economies collapse. There are some simple rules of the universe that will come into play: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and What goes around, comes around. Karma can be a real bitch.
It's not a question of need. It's a question of reality. China is rapidly becoming an economic powerhouse and the entire world is moving away from the US as a reliable trading partner and looking at China. And like it or not the 21st century belongs to China thanks largely to the greed that has destroyed America.
Sorry, this is the product of the Duopoly. Both parties want this, Genocide Kamala on stage, " Iran is our greatest enemy" Genocide Anal raping Clinton " Iran will fear me."
No one needs superpowers. Humanity needs SUPERJUSTICE. That is why human uncivilization repeatedly faces existential problems. Because most humans worship power instead of worshipping JUSTICE, TRUTH, and MORALITY (teachings of Christianity and Islam). The judeo-nazi zionist western "civilization" is absolute abomination and the cancer of humanity.
I'm with you on that, yes it will be painful for billions as you say, this is what happens when we let one country become too powerful over the others and once we rise up out of the ashes of what went before, we have to ensure it never happens again.
The ONLY pain I want to see is that of the WHITE western world..........I am pretty sure that other countries called "Banana Republics" by the USA/Western hegemons will survive.
IF you have not travelled the world you would know that NOT every country has accepted the USA.
NO one speaks of Indonesia which currently goes about it's business with total disregard to the USA.
Our earth is a big place........the arm of the USA/Israhell means nothing.
China reigns supreme here.
I have watched and learned..........is it possible that China will become like the USA/Israel. Yes.
Man does not know when to stop.
I have absolutely NO faith in human beings whatsoever.
If every country had accepted the USA, the USA would not be going around the world trying to overthrow governments, wrecking their countries and killing and injuring ever more people. At least not to the extent it does.
I agree, man does not know when to stop, the longer it all goes on through the decades, those in "charge" appear to have become ever more crueler and evil in their ways and words. A majority of the people have become more indifferent to others pain and suffering, at home and away.
Wanting the white westerners only to suffer pain is a pretty sweeping statement, the one big problem if you managed to rid yourself of the white Western world, I can guarantee it would be not so long before one of those countries left behind, turned around and became the new "white" man and started throwing their weight around and very soon the world would look pretty much as it does now.
You mentioned about not every country had accepted USA. I was simply pointing out the USA would have no one to fight, so it was obvious not all countries accepted them
I wasn't even thinking about China. Take China and any other country you think is edging into that position right now. One of those countries left would want to step into that position.
I mean global civilization. Today it is characterized by an imperial hegemon fighting against growing poles of influence that approach power very differently. I think with hegemony extinct, a new global civilization can take shape for the first time in history. Even in America.
Hegemony will never become extinct as long as the dollar is the favored international currency, and that shows no likelihood of changing anytime soon. The global economy will protect the hegemony of the American banking system, and that means more wars and more plundering. But just like the American pilots ran out of targets in Iran, the CIA is going to exhaust social systems to regime change.
At some point the cost of enabling power projection that fits all potential circumstances will be too costly to sustain, but the neoliberals have a solution. Encircle Russia, and give Russia no options. Ukraine was a run-through.
The U.S. has already begun raiding Russian shadow fleets, which were set up to circumvent American sanctions. If the Russians engage the Americans in a sea war, they won’t prevail, especially while they’re still dealing with Ukraine.
So the best thing for the planet will be for the Americans to call Iran’s bluff, and destroy its vital infrastructure, and induce Iran to destroy all of the oil production in West Asia. This will guarantee a global depression that will trigger a currency collapse and change, and then gold may return as the global currency standard.
An infrastructure attack on Iran seems more likely by the day. But it's not because of forethought or strategic planning; it's happening because of an absence of it. The US is run by a president who lacks the ability to understand consequences because he's never faced them in his own life. He DEI'ed the most incompetent sycophants into all the positions of consequence. Everything points to him just shooting from the hip in a non-institutional, reactionary way. He's a goddamn spoiled child who never grew up or got his ass beat when he needed it.
And Iran did not issue a bluf, btw. The US threatened to annihilate Iranian civilization. Iran called the American bluff. They have outlined what the response to an infrastructure attack would be. That's not a threat.
Yes, I agree. The Iranians have been consistent throughout this existential war. I used the wrong word. I think that the U.S. president is a clinically defined narcissist.
But his ineptitude isn’t relevant to the American deep state that will do anything to preserve the empire, including erasing him if they are so inclined. I think that the brutality that has been the tone of the American attack on Iran is the new American normal. People think Netanyahu is evil incarnate, but he’s a pit bull on too much ketamine, and he would have been put down if his handlers were displeased with his offensive lack of human decency.
In this context, I think Trump may take the off ramp provided by Iran, which will give the neoliberals life to move on to their Russian war. The Americans have been punching Russia since 2022, and haven’t been touched. Why that is is debatable, but because Russia has sought to avoid a war with America, the West reads that as soft. So now Russia will feel more heat as the empire seeks to sustain itself. This was going to happen eventually, but if they back off of Iran, they will need a war to grease the economic gears and seek to get back to a normal routine.
The US uses very little crude from the Persian Gulf and it can re-source fertilizers and the small amount of other commodities it gets there. So the US has all the time in the world to bomb and destroy. It really faces little risk compared to other nations. America is there purely for Israel which has proven to be an effective overthrower of governments and destroyer of peoples. Dem or Republican on the WH, doesn't matter. That's why this is so fucked up.
It probably doesn't have all the time in the world. My understanding is that it cannot meet its own energy needs despite sitting on a lot of reserve because it didn't develop the sort of refineries to turn the raw reserve material into a usable form...because it was less profitable than importing it. So just from an energy standpoint, we probably don't have all the time in the world. Building refineries takes a certain amount of time. I don't know what the scale is but I imagine at least a couple of years. Just enough time to squeeze a World War in. But ignoring our domestic energy issue, the current energy crisis could cause shifts in tech stocks because the GCC countries are no longer turning a profit and Taiwan is increasingly likely to voluntarily repatriate with mainland China (because of the energy crisis). Most of the US economy's growth is due to AI investment. If that collapses, the US economy probably does too. The US does not have all the time in the world. It probably has very little time to course-correct to avert unstoppable collapse. That's to say nothing of internal political anger about the cost of living, which os being made worse (by the energy crisis). There's not a favorable way to spin the current situation.
An additional plus for the establishment slime suckers is that while they have people worried over fuel supplies, understandingly so, concerns about fossil fuel based industrialism continuing to pump excess carbon into the atmosphere and as a result destabilizing the lifeways of the planet gets even further pushed into the background. As well, Trumpism has removed all references to climate change from government websites.
And the carbon fuel barons garner record profits through price manipulation.
I am not sure if you are from the u.s. however, the reason fuel prices drive all emotions here in the u.s., without cheap gasoline people can not get to work. Gone are the days when I was in school, car pooling so we could all get there required a society that didn't fail you for being 10 mins. late or a job that understood the three other people in the car had to get to their work place also. We have zero public transportation, even when large cities have public transportation it barely functions. The train to Chicago by me rocks and rolls so hard it runs at a walking pace. War is the only thing the country has invested in for 60 yrs. Lake Powell it looks like this year may not generate power from the damn. Millions of people and agriculture depend on it because we failed knowing we would fail. There is so much more but I bore you.
In fact I spent my childhood in the prototypical post-war US suburb, Levittown, NY. Pre-war it was a thriving agricultural area which provided a good deal of food to NYC and environs.
It was built, and continues to exist, centered around private ownership of cars, without which it is near impossible to function.
It was initially populated mainly by WW2 vets with ez credit via the GI Bill.
The entire suburbanization model was promoted as serving the interests of the Gas and Real Estate Barons when gas was around 25 cents a gallon and a home could be purchased for about a years worth of salary earned by the primary wage slave, usually the man.
The United States of sprawl and shopping malls will not survive too much longer as we enter the time of Peak Everything.
I think you already know the answer, it will be taken from the people of the United States and they will suffer greatly.
They keep talking about decreasing the population but even if they did that, they still wouldn't be happy, they just haven't thought it out, like everything else they touch. They will no longer have huge populations to bully, to practice their cruelty on. This will leave them with two choices, either increase the population again or fight each other.
It will certainly hurt almost all of us in ways many have never experienced before, but I think of it like the withdrawals junkies have to endure before they make it out the other side. Humanity is going to be better for it.
It's not going anywhere under its own choice. It's being put in its place and forced to leave a part of the world it has no business meddling with. The astounding thing is listening to positions like your own that are unable to see how the balance of power is shifting, and how Americas influence through soft power is waning in the same way it's military capability is.
You've correctly identified the copium but you failed to realise you are projecting your own position onto others.
"Even if the US wasn’t directly responsible for the Strait of Hormuz situation, it would still be the last country on earth with any business whining about it. They’re openly imposing a fuel blockade on Cuba while complaining that nobody should be allowed to block shipping lanes, for Christ’s sake."
And there's more: while (correct me if I'm mistaken) Iran is operating in its territorial waters, the usa, well.... obviously not.
Just the power happens to be an illusion of delusional people. To be able to bring damage has never been a sign of power, every stupid child could bring great damage.
We have no enemies, that is the primary reason we are in this situation. Tell me who is our enemy in the u.s. ? Many would say we are our own enemies a Schizophrenic enemy.
Your own enemy you are for sure but many people around the world start to despise more and more what the US represents and how US citizens behave abroard, with or without an uniform. Just because we still smile, doesn't mean we like you.
Why deny the obvious? China & Russia would wipe their behind with your 'people who matter' and they slowly seem to understand just that now in the West.
"“Iran’s leaders must be made to understand that their lives literally depend on reaching a negotiated settlement to Trump’s liking. If they refuse to do so, they will be killed,” Thiessen writes.
At some point one of America’s enemies is going to assassinate a US official and my replies are going to be full of shrieking, outraged Americans acting like I’m the bad guy when I say Washington had it coming."
Fuck Thiessen.And fuck anyone who agreed with the New York Times calling for the death of all those Iranians that flew to Pakistan. Talk about showing their true colour's.
The difference is that the US is strong enough that they can simply brute force their will, punches notwithstanding. They'll go nuclear if that is what it takes.
To me Strength is having good morals, standing up to people like Netanyahu, choosing what is best for their people, not getting mouthy and thinking the only way out to stop feeling scared of the self made mess you're in, is to assassinate people out of the way to make you feel better about yourselves.
This is what weak but fundamentally decent people tell themselves to feel better. A comforting lie. Strength simply is power. The power to help yourself and defeat your enemies.
That is all.
I think one of the Palantir bros put it this way - western dominance is solely the result of the west being more ruthless and better at organized violence. There is nothing else to it.
Pompey put it thusly: "Don't quote laws to us. We carry swords."
The west's enemies keep on losing because they want to be nice and thus constantly hamstrings themselves. The west sees this as contemptible weakness and has no such qualms.
I still don't get it when seemingly "intelligent" people read NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Times, BBC, CNN, Fox, NPR, Spiegel, DW, ARD, ZDF, etc., i.e., western propaganda and lies to get "informed". And how shameless western propaganda is to call itself "fair and balanced".
I'm even worse, I don't get why people have a television at all and no I don't watch it on the internet, I think decades ago when people were more practical and had no choice but to save money they tried to tell us something 😂 Always remember visits to a couple of my great aunts homes, meant newspapers torn into neat squares to be used instead of toilet tissue.
"You and I may get it, but most humans will not." Most of the Democrats I know (estimated at approximately 99%) don't get it or have any desire to get it. From time to time, I take the opportunity to demonstrate their blatant hypocrisy to them; they become angry with me.
I don't know about the 1830's, but in modern times our entire corporate media apparatus is compromised. It isn't a free press. It's heavily editorialized state propaganda made to look and sound like reporting. Part of the propaganda was to take over the political discussion and transform it into divisive cultural wedge issues. So Americans don't get along partly because they have been fed a steady diet of hatemongering bullshit since the Boomers were kids. It's why "communism" is a bad word. It's why we argue over bathrooms instead of cost of living. Our mainstream media whores are 1000% culpable for the America you see.
Wow! Hyperfascism. Things are worse than I thought.
The Nazis never assassinated negotiators. Nor any heads of state or generals for that matter. It wasn't done. Never tortured a baby either. So here we are in the transNazi zone.
2F in a study of chaos theory, fractals, bifurcations, nonlinear perturbations, quantum fluctuations we realize that life is not simple and linear. Sometimes solutions are totally surprising and appear unexpectedly.
It's a minority supporting these things, maybe 30%. The people need to organize politically to put a stop to this. There is no sign that this is happening.
The human masses are easily as any dog or sheep. Think about how profoundly stupid the average frustrated human is. By definition, half of humanity is even stupider than that.
Romanticist fantasies such as Les Miz notwithstanding, as long as the 1% are united, they have nothing to fear, because they will do whatever it takes to keep power.
Revolutions happen when the 1% are divided amongst themselves. The US is nowhere near that point.
"The real case against Communism is that it is a refined form of tyranny... A person who has chosen a life of asceticism may be doing something noble and beautiful, but when a whole society is forced into it, 'it becomes simply vandalism or barbaric destruction'"
Unlike western "freedom, human rights, and democracy" (aka fascism, nazism, zionism, westernism, americanism, exceptionalism) that brings peace, love, and prosperity to all people all the time?
Oh do *I* KNOW terrorism! I see it practiced every second, minute, hour, week, years, decades...centuries by good old (near death now RIP) Uncle Sam and his HANDLER israyHELL. Now THERE'S TERRORISM on steroids.
Oh, Nick, dear, we've already established that you've planted your feet in toxic soil, so just move along to do your haunting elsewhere. But I do want to remind you that, alas, you're NOT the center of the universe. Sad, I know.
Democrats will continue to tell you they're better. Just like when Jimmy Carter was more humane, renegotiating the Panama canal treaty to screw that country.
No master of the empire has ever ruled without the phrase "he improved the climate for investment by American businesses".
Caitlin so right about the Dems. But people are so fixated on Trump (and rightly so) that the whole issue regarding the corruption of the Democratic party and DNC's hand-picked leaders who will replace Trump is marginalized. And so the descent continues for the US into a 2nd rate nation led by monied criminals, as nothing is being done about the corrupted two party system.
Well done for publishing and saying - Peace be upon you by Gaza and Jerusalem - Honour and victory are the allies of the axis of resistance and its allies, and humiliation and shame are for the axis of evil, Epstein Class (USA, Britain, France, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, NATO Governments, Zionist and Israel) and its allies.
"At some point one of America’s enemies is going to assassinate a US official and my replies are going to be full of shrieking, outraged Americans acting like I’m the bad guy when I say Washington had it coming."
I find it hard to believe how anyone in the USA can be deluded by the their government, be it it Republicans or Democrats, the only difference is that Trump an Co are gobshites and say everything loudly about what they thinking, with that extra psychotic touch.
There again I don't know how anyone in the UK can fall for our governments lies either, be they Labour, Conservatives, Liberal, Reform etc; more choices, more lies.
As to LEGO, I've just watched Rock ID Official, the Iranian bands latest one, singing about Trump, Netanyahu, the pedophiles in Congress, Epstein all put to one of the LEGO videos, so they're still rocking on YouTube. Happy days.
What if it's not about West vs East, but the Epstein class vs humanity?
What if the ruling families already control all the countries, and this is a plan to get us closer to Agenda 2030 with a biometric, electronic control grid?
"It’s important not to let them pin this all on Trump, in the same way it’s important not to let them pin Israel’s crimes on Netanyahu. Everything we are seeing with this disastrous Iran war is the product of the entire power structure which gave rise to it, not one guy’s dopey decisions."
Hope is useless as events will go one way or another no matter how much "hope" is backing any one of them. But what happens if the US loses and the empire collapses? There is no way to know.
Even if these latest military interventions doesn't really change things, the US is headed on a collision course with destiny...very similar to the fate of the Romans. Governments are always far too arrogant to see their own deaths staring them in the face.
The US is bound to lose and the Empire, like all empires before it, will collapse. All we can hope for that this collapse will occur before all of us collapse.
There is zero chance the US collapse doesn't affect billions of people because of how interconnected the global economy is. That said, I am still hoping for it because it's what is needed to change the power dynamic of civilization once and for all.
China will, of course, do fine and rise from the ashes of the collapse of Western Civilization to become the next world's superpower. And in the end, Donald Trump will forever be known as the man who made it all happen.
Well I think the Chinese deserve credit for their own rise. But yes Trump is the clown that knocked over the first domino to collapse western empire.
Turns out having a government that doesn't turn over every 4 or 8 years is kind of an advantage.
The American government hasn’t turned over since Kennedy was assassinated. Even then it was a potential change of government that was nipped in the bud.
Absolutely! Most people can’t or won’t acknowledge that because they want to see it like a sporting event—red team vs blue team. Some of the smartest people I know indulge in that narrative, but I totally agree with you.
Exactly. Only the name of the a$$hole-in-chief changes. Nothing else.
Absolutely right. Short-term governments indulge in short-term thinking, sometimes it barely qualifies as thinking, to suit election cycles. A problem in many countries.
Just look at China and Iran. One is technically Islamic, and the other communist, but what they funtionally are under the lid are buraucratic monoliths. Solid, stable (compared to liberal democracies), and with the momentum to bring huge swathes of people from agrarian lifestyles into modern industrial as well as post-industrial societies within the span of a few generations, and they're not slowing down. Iran impreses me the most, because they achieved all that despite the Immoral ire of America. I know many Westerners typically don't like the fact they have built their state around Islam, but the material effect it has had is that their state and culture now sits on beauracratic systems that have been refined over literal millenia. Contemporary China gets it's same advantage from it's own millenia old lineage in much the same way.
The cultural equivalents of patient and wise elders waiting for the grandchildren to exhaust themselves in a tantrum.
Agree.
The collapse of the western empire began after WW2, when the US military industrial complex and the CIA took over from the British empire. Since then it has fought many wars and removed governments from power, and destroyed some once thriving countries, such as Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Despite the seemingly unending expansion and wars of the US and Israel, they are both doomed to fail as the rest of the world turns against them and their highly indebted economies collapse. There are some simple rules of the universe that will come into play: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and What goes around, comes around. Karma can be a real bitch.
Karma can be a real bitch, agreed but a lovable bitch at times, especially where teaching the USA and Israel a lesson is concerned.
It is sad don't you think, that so much has to be destroyed, so many lives ruined before that reaction happens.
To me you ask the most difficult and painful question. How much of the empire must die before a peaceful world of Caitlin can be born.
Thank you for those thoughts.
We don’t need any more “superpowers”.
It's not a question of need. It's a question of reality. China is rapidly becoming an economic powerhouse and the entire world is moving away from the US as a reliable trading partner and looking at China. And like it or not the 21st century belongs to China thanks largely to the greed that has destroyed America.
By a real value of currency, Purchasing Power Parity. China is already the leading economy in the world.
Sorry, this is the product of the Duopoly. Both parties want this, Genocide Kamala on stage, " Iran is our greatest enemy" Genocide Anal raping Clinton " Iran will fear me."
No one needs superpowers. Humanity needs SUPERJUSTICE. That is why human uncivilization repeatedly faces existential problems. Because most humans worship power instead of worshipping JUSTICE, TRUTH, and MORALITY (teachings of Christianity and Islam). The judeo-nazi zionist western "civilization" is absolute abomination and the cancer of humanity.
I'm with you on that, yes it will be painful for billions as you say, this is what happens when we let one country become too powerful over the others and once we rise up out of the ashes of what went before, we have to ensure it never happens again.
👍 kindred spirit...I'm of the same mind. Humans are not up to the task of .... being "human."
Exactly.
Hi Veronica.
The ONLY pain I want to see is that of the WHITE western world..........I am pretty sure that other countries called "Banana Republics" by the USA/Western hegemons will survive.
IF you have not travelled the world you would know that NOT every country has accepted the USA.
NO one speaks of Indonesia which currently goes about it's business with total disregard to the USA.
Our earth is a big place........the arm of the USA/Israhell means nothing.
China reigns supreme here.
I have watched and learned..........is it possible that China will become like the USA/Israel. Yes.
Man does not know when to stop.
I have absolutely NO faith in human beings whatsoever.
If every country had accepted the USA, the USA would not be going around the world trying to overthrow governments, wrecking their countries and killing and injuring ever more people. At least not to the extent it does.
I agree, man does not know when to stop, the longer it all goes on through the decades, those in "charge" appear to have become ever more crueler and evil in their ways and words. A majority of the people have become more indifferent to others pain and suffering, at home and away.
Wanting the white westerners only to suffer pain is a pretty sweeping statement, the one big problem if you managed to rid yourself of the white Western world, I can guarantee it would be not so long before one of those countries left behind, turned around and became the new "white" man and started throwing their weight around and very soon the world would look pretty much as it does now.
" If every country had accepted the USA..........!"
I don't understand this statement?
I said in my post..........quite possible that someone like China might end up the same. as the Westerners.
You mentioned about not every country had accepted USA. I was simply pointing out the USA would have no one to fight, so it was obvious not all countries accepted them
I wasn't even thinking about China. Take China and any other country you think is edging into that position right now. One of those countries left would want to step into that position.
That hurts me, you know I love you.
Western civilization.
I mean global civilization. Today it is characterized by an imperial hegemon fighting against growing poles of influence that approach power very differently. I think with hegemony extinct, a new global civilization can take shape for the first time in history. Even in America.
Hegemony will never become extinct as long as the dollar is the favored international currency, and that shows no likelihood of changing anytime soon. The global economy will protect the hegemony of the American banking system, and that means more wars and more plundering. But just like the American pilots ran out of targets in Iran, the CIA is going to exhaust social systems to regime change.
At some point the cost of enabling power projection that fits all potential circumstances will be too costly to sustain, but the neoliberals have a solution. Encircle Russia, and give Russia no options. Ukraine was a run-through.
The U.S. has already begun raiding Russian shadow fleets, which were set up to circumvent American sanctions. If the Russians engage the Americans in a sea war, they won’t prevail, especially while they’re still dealing with Ukraine.
So the best thing for the planet will be for the Americans to call Iran’s bluff, and destroy its vital infrastructure, and induce Iran to destroy all of the oil production in West Asia. This will guarantee a global depression that will trigger a currency collapse and change, and then gold may return as the global currency standard.
Then there will be no hegemon.
An infrastructure attack on Iran seems more likely by the day. But it's not because of forethought or strategic planning; it's happening because of an absence of it. The US is run by a president who lacks the ability to understand consequences because he's never faced them in his own life. He DEI'ed the most incompetent sycophants into all the positions of consequence. Everything points to him just shooting from the hip in a non-institutional, reactionary way. He's a goddamn spoiled child who never grew up or got his ass beat when he needed it.
And Iran did not issue a bluf, btw. The US threatened to annihilate Iranian civilization. Iran called the American bluff. They have outlined what the response to an infrastructure attack would be. That's not a threat.
Yes, I agree. The Iranians have been consistent throughout this existential war. I used the wrong word. I think that the U.S. president is a clinically defined narcissist.
But his ineptitude isn’t relevant to the American deep state that will do anything to preserve the empire, including erasing him if they are so inclined. I think that the brutality that has been the tone of the American attack on Iran is the new American normal. People think Netanyahu is evil incarnate, but he’s a pit bull on too much ketamine, and he would have been put down if his handlers were displeased with his offensive lack of human decency.
In this context, I think Trump may take the off ramp provided by Iran, which will give the neoliberals life to move on to their Russian war. The Americans have been punching Russia since 2022, and haven’t been touched. Why that is is debatable, but because Russia has sought to avoid a war with America, the West reads that as soft. So now Russia will feel more heat as the empire seeks to sustain itself. This was going to happen eventually, but if they back off of Iran, they will need a war to grease the economic gears and seek to get back to a normal routine.
The US uses very little crude from the Persian Gulf and it can re-source fertilizers and the small amount of other commodities it gets there. So the US has all the time in the world to bomb and destroy. It really faces little risk compared to other nations. America is there purely for Israel which has proven to be an effective overthrower of governments and destroyer of peoples. Dem or Republican on the WH, doesn't matter. That's why this is so fucked up.
It probably doesn't have all the time in the world. My understanding is that it cannot meet its own energy needs despite sitting on a lot of reserve because it didn't develop the sort of refineries to turn the raw reserve material into a usable form...because it was less profitable than importing it. So just from an energy standpoint, we probably don't have all the time in the world. Building refineries takes a certain amount of time. I don't know what the scale is but I imagine at least a couple of years. Just enough time to squeeze a World War in. But ignoring our domestic energy issue, the current energy crisis could cause shifts in tech stocks because the GCC countries are no longer turning a profit and Taiwan is increasingly likely to voluntarily repatriate with mainland China (because of the energy crisis). Most of the US economy's growth is due to AI investment. If that collapses, the US economy probably does too. The US does not have all the time in the world. It probably has very little time to course-correct to avert unstoppable collapse. That's to say nothing of internal political anger about the cost of living, which os being made worse (by the energy crisis). There's not a favorable way to spin the current situation.
I'd say that was a precise weighing up of the situation.
The refinery situation is my understanding also.
An additional plus for the establishment slime suckers is that while they have people worried over fuel supplies, understandingly so, concerns about fossil fuel based industrialism continuing to pump excess carbon into the atmosphere and as a result destabilizing the lifeways of the planet gets even further pushed into the background. As well, Trumpism has removed all references to climate change from government websites.
And the carbon fuel barons garner record profits through price manipulation.
I am not sure if you are from the u.s. however, the reason fuel prices drive all emotions here in the u.s., without cheap gasoline people can not get to work. Gone are the days when I was in school, car pooling so we could all get there required a society that didn't fail you for being 10 mins. late or a job that understood the three other people in the car had to get to their work place also. We have zero public transportation, even when large cities have public transportation it barely functions. The train to Chicago by me rocks and rolls so hard it runs at a walking pace. War is the only thing the country has invested in for 60 yrs. Lake Powell it looks like this year may not generate power from the damn. Millions of people and agriculture depend on it because we failed knowing we would fail. There is so much more but I bore you.
In fact I spent my childhood in the prototypical post-war US suburb, Levittown, NY. Pre-war it was a thriving agricultural area which provided a good deal of food to NYC and environs.
It was built, and continues to exist, centered around private ownership of cars, without which it is near impossible to function.
It was initially populated mainly by WW2 vets with ez credit via the GI Bill.
The entire suburbanization model was promoted as serving the interests of the Gas and Real Estate Barons when gas was around 25 cents a gallon and a home could be purchased for about a years worth of salary earned by the primary wage slave, usually the man.
The United States of sprawl and shopping malls will not survive too much longer as we enter the time of Peak Everything.
"US has little risk." Forgive me for laughing.
At the present moment the UNITEDSTATES of Israhell is very busy building 'data centers' in many States.
Please talk to me about Data Centers: Where is the decrepit electricity and water coming from to keep these centers going?
Has the USA updated it's infrastructure whilst they have been fighting wars. NO!
I think you already know the answer, it will be taken from the people of the United States and they will suffer greatly.
They keep talking about decreasing the population but even if they did that, they still wouldn't be happy, they just haven't thought it out, like everything else they touch. They will no longer have huge populations to bully, to practice their cruelty on. This will leave them with two choices, either increase the population again or fight each other.
Well said Ms. Fellay and agreed. All empires fall, they just decline and fade away at different rates.
🤞🤞🤞🤞
It will certainly hurt almost all of us in ways many have never experienced before, but I think of it like the withdrawals junkies have to endure before they make it out the other side. Humanity is going to be better for it.
Hum, war is always the choice and today, many of those options don't have an other side. Run to the Light.
The US isn't going anywhere. Regardless of your copium consumption
It's not going anywhere under its own choice. It's being put in its place and forced to leave a part of the world it has no business meddling with. The astounding thing is listening to positions like your own that are unable to see how the balance of power is shifting, and how Americas influence through soft power is waning in the same way it's military capability is.
You've correctly identified the copium but you failed to realise you are projecting your own position onto others.
Lol, what's astounding is your desperation to pretend the US is losing the war 🤣
"Even if the US wasn’t directly responsible for the Strait of Hormuz situation, it would still be the last country on earth with any business whining about it. They’re openly imposing a fuel blockade on Cuba while complaining that nobody should be allowed to block shipping lanes, for Christ’s sake."
And there's more: while (correct me if I'm mistaken) Iran is operating in its territorial waters, the usa, well.... obviously not.
Cuba, did you see they're rockin' t.shirts with "fight like an Iranian" on the front.
Right never had anything to do with it. This is a question of power. Nothing more.
Just the power happens to be an illusion of delusional people. To be able to bring damage has never been a sign of power, every stupid child could bring great damage.
Such talk is how the powerless console themselves.
Mao would disagree. "Power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
Right but they're running out of guns plus we, the enemy of the US have guns as well.
they are running out of much more than guns...
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Pentagon-Has-268-Days-to-Replace-Americas-Most-Critical-Supply-Chain.html
We have no enemies, that is the primary reason we are in this situation. Tell me who is our enemy in the u.s. ? Many would say we are our own enemies a Schizophrenic enemy.
Your own enemy you are for sure but many people around the world start to despise more and more what the US represents and how US citizens behave abroard, with or without an uniform. Just because we still smile, doesn't mean we like you.
You need more. Much more. And more lethal.
Even if that were true (it's not) it underscores my point.
Why deny the obvious? China & Russia would wipe their behind with your 'people who matter' and they slowly seem to understand just that now in the West.
It splits the strait with Oman, and it agrees to share the tolls with Oman.
"“Iran’s leaders must be made to understand that their lives literally depend on reaching a negotiated settlement to Trump’s liking. If they refuse to do so, they will be killed,” Thiessen writes.
At some point one of America’s enemies is going to assassinate a US official and my replies are going to be full of shrieking, outraged Americans acting like I’m the bad guy when I say Washington had it coming."
American soft power, in a nutshell.
You and I may get it, but most humans will not.
Fuck Thiessen.And fuck anyone who agreed with the New York Times calling for the death of all those Iranians that flew to Pakistan. Talk about showing their true colour's.
Washington has definitely got it coming.
I believe it was the Washington Post but your point still stands.
Hell, fuck em both
Could have been, I'll admit I could have got the name wrong.
Because they can. Washington simply acts this way because they are strong and because they can.
As a wise man once said, "Everyone has a plan 'til they get punched in the face."
The difference is that the US is strong enough that they can simply brute force their will, punches notwithstanding. They'll go nuclear if that is what it takes.
Which proves how weak they really are.
Not really. The West will get what they want and their enemies will be dead.
Others have nukes too. And many of them!
The West is confident that Russia and China don't have the stones.
Yes, that was famous quote from Professor Dr. Mike Tyson's thesis.
Brother Mike
Goat
Pure fighting, probably Yes
Historical significance, advantage Ali
To me Strength is having good morals, standing up to people like Netanyahu, choosing what is best for their people, not getting mouthy and thinking the only way out to stop feeling scared of the self made mess you're in, is to assassinate people out of the way to make you feel better about yourselves.
This is what weak but fundamentally decent people tell themselves to feel better. A comforting lie. Strength simply is power. The power to help yourself and defeat your enemies.
That is all.
I think one of the Palantir bros put it this way - western dominance is solely the result of the west being more ruthless and better at organized violence. There is nothing else to it.
Pompey put it thusly: "Don't quote laws to us. We carry swords."
I like the Pompey quote.
I don't see that as real strength, that's just bullying others to fall in line.
It is bullying. It works.
The west's enemies keep on losing because they want to be nice and thus constantly hamstrings themselves. The west sees this as contemptible weakness and has no such qualms.
Gladio ferit
Gladio perit
The Roman Empire was able to keep it up for 50p 500 years, more or less.
I still don't get it when seemingly "intelligent" people read NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Times, BBC, CNN, Fox, NPR, Spiegel, DW, ARD, ZDF, etc., i.e., western propaganda and lies to get "informed". And how shameless western propaganda is to call itself "fair and balanced".
I'm even worse, I don't get why people have a television at all and no I don't watch it on the internet, I think decades ago when people were more practical and had no choice but to save money they tried to tell us something 😂 Always remember visits to a couple of my great aunts homes, meant newspapers torn into neat squares to be used instead of toilet tissue.
Soon people will say, What was that thing called the NY Times and israel what was that all about.
The sooner those things drop out of existence, the better. 😉
"You and I may get it, but most humans will not." Most of the Democrats I know (estimated at approximately 99%) don't get it or have any desire to get it. From time to time, I take the opportunity to demonstrate their blatant hypocrisy to them; they become angry with me.
It's called: Comfortably numb. Thank you Roger Waters.
Great song.
Another one - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh6cvHC81Q8
Thanks for that, definitely should have had a lot more views than seven and a half thousand.
Did you mean "comfortably dumb" :)
(not to be confused with great human Roger Waters)
Ok...............numb and dumb!
Tocqueville noted in the 1830's that Americans were averse to any criticism and that it provoked angry responses from them. Has anything changed ???
I don't know about the 1830's, but in modern times our entire corporate media apparatus is compromised. It isn't a free press. It's heavily editorialized state propaganda made to look and sound like reporting. Part of the propaganda was to take over the political discussion and transform it into divisive cultural wedge issues. So Americans don't get along partly because they have been fed a steady diet of hatemongering bullshit since the Boomers were kids. It's why "communism" is a bad word. It's why we argue over bathrooms instead of cost of living. Our mainstream media whores are 1000% culpable for the America you see.
Wow! Hyperfascism. Things are worse than I thought.
The Nazis never assassinated negotiators. Nor any heads of state or generals for that matter. It wasn't done. Never tortured a baby either. So here we are in the transNazi zone.
Yes. What does anyone propose to do about it?
2F in a study of chaos theory, fractals, bifurcations, nonlinear perturbations, quantum fluctuations we realize that life is not simple and linear. Sometimes solutions are totally surprising and appear unexpectedly.
"Maybe a butterfly in the Amazon jungle will fix everything somehow!: is not a strategy.
Maybe it will
It's a minority supporting these things, maybe 30%. The people need to organize politically to put a stop to this. There is no sign that this is happening.
It's always been that way.
The human masses are easily as any dog or sheep. Think about how profoundly stupid the average frustrated human is. By definition, half of humanity is even stupider than that.
History shows us plenty of revolutions. Not at all in sight in the USA though.
Romanticist fantasies such as Les Miz notwithstanding, as long as the 1% are united, they have nothing to fear, because they will do whatever it takes to keep power.
Revolutions happen when the 1% are divided amongst themselves. The US is nowhere near that point.
I will join you Feral.
Yup. Me, too...250 years of a terrorist scourge....
Let's not pretend that the Americans didn't inherit Western imperialism from the Europeans. This shit goes back before 1776.
they took the reins and ran with it
Yawn.
Haha. Fitting reply from one lacking critical thinking (cognitive skills, generally?)...an ad hominem, labeling ....sad. bigly.
"Never argue with stupid people; they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience." Mark Twain
Your assertion is so ridiculous it doesn't deserve a response. Other than for you to go learn the definition of terrorism.
🥱 "Thy thoughts arrive late and leave early." W.S.
"The real case against Communism is that it is a refined form of tyranny... A person who has chosen a life of asceticism may be doing something noble and beautiful, but when a whole society is forced into it, 'it becomes simply vandalism or barbaric destruction'"
-GK
Unlike western "freedom, human rights, and democracy" (aka fascism, nazism, zionism, westernism, americanism, exceptionalism) that brings peace, love, and prosperity to all people all the time?
Oh do *I* KNOW terrorism! I see it practiced every second, minute, hour, week, years, decades...centuries by good old (near death now RIP) Uncle Sam and his HANDLER israyHELL. Now THERE'S TERRORISM on steroids.
More absurdit drivel
Oh, Nick, dear, we've already established that you've planted your feet in toxic soil, so just move along to do your haunting elsewhere. But I do want to remind you that, alas, you're NOT the center of the universe. Sad, I know.
...oh, dear, no need to jam your jocks in a bunch - I wasn't "talking" to YOU! You silly goose, you. Move along, now...
Irrelevant boomer leftist and impotent America hate. Name a more iconic duo 🤣
What are you doing here? Making $$$$? Silly Billy. Just making an arse of yourself...toodles...
Democrats will continue to tell you they're better. Just like when Jimmy Carter was more humane, renegotiating the Panama canal treaty to screw that country.
No master of the empire has ever ruled without the phrase "he improved the climate for investment by American businesses".
Caitlin so right about the Dems. But people are so fixated on Trump (and rightly so) that the whole issue regarding the corruption of the Democratic party and DNC's hand-picked leaders who will replace Trump is marginalized. And so the descent continues for the US into a 2nd rate nation led by monied criminals, as nothing is being done about the corrupted two party system.
Such convenient theater in which both criminal parties can flourish (in their lying to their constituents).
Yup. A few self-serving and hypocritical human rights noises. Otherwise no difference.
I'm right there with you on this.
Well done for publishing and saying - Peace be upon you by Gaza and Jerusalem - Honour and victory are the allies of the axis of resistance and its allies, and humiliation and shame are for the axis of evil, Epstein Class (USA, Britain, France, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, NATO Governments, Zionist and Israel) and its allies.
re: "I Hope The US Loses And The Empire Collapses…"
Anyone with a shred of morality and understanding of colonial, imperial history should agree.
I know I do.
As always - much love to you.
A ‘loss’ for USrael would be a major win for the American people.
Yeah, and millions of humans all over the world.
Quote from Caitlin's thread:
"At some point one of America’s enemies is going to assassinate a US official and my replies are going to be full of shrieking, outraged Americans acting like I’m the bad guy when I say Washington had it coming."
Ahmen, Ahmen, Ahmen.
iran was already skipping the middle man with its list of 10+ us corporations.
100% Caitlin
I find it hard to believe how anyone in the USA can be deluded by the their government, be it it Republicans or Democrats, the only difference is that Trump an Co are gobshites and say everything loudly about what they thinking, with that extra psychotic touch.
There again I don't know how anyone in the UK can fall for our governments lies either, be they Labour, Conservatives, Liberal, Reform etc; more choices, more lies.
As to LEGO, I've just watched Rock ID Official, the Iranian bands latest one, singing about Trump, Netanyahu, the pedophiles in Congress, Epstein all put to one of the LEGO videos, so they're still rocking on YouTube. Happy days.
What if it's not about West vs East, but the Epstein class vs humanity?
What if the ruling families already control all the countries, and this is a plan to get us closer to Agenda 2030 with a biometric, electronic control grid?
Sounds about right to me.
Good point. The Iranian Parliament building is a Freemasonic structure.
Such an important point:
"It’s important not to let them pin this all on Trump, in the same way it’s important not to let them pin Israel’s crimes on Netanyahu. Everything we are seeing with this disastrous Iran war is the product of the entire power structure which gave rise to it, not one guy’s dopey decisions."
Hope is useless as events will go one way or another no matter how much "hope" is backing any one of them. But what happens if the US loses and the empire collapses? There is no way to know.
Even if these latest military interventions doesn't really change things, the US is headed on a collision course with destiny...very similar to the fate of the Romans. Governments are always far too arrogant to see their own deaths staring them in the face.