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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • its citizens refuse to rise up

    Americans routinely go through periods of insurrection and revolt. We had Occupy. We had the BLM protests. We had the anti-war movement stretching from early 2003 to 2012. We had anti-genocide protests. We’ve had No Kings marches - massive parades of people in the street shouting and marching. We had the J6 riot at the capital. We’ve had militia movements all through the Midwest and Gulf Coast. We have cartels and mafias that periodically pick fights with local, state, and federal police. Biker riots and Tea Party marches and tax revolts and race riots.

    The problem isn’t that Americans won’t rise up. The problem is that we also have an enormous, incredibly well-armed and exhaustively well-trained policing bureaucracy. Over 700,000 professional cops, plus sheriff’s deputies and national guardsmen and private security guards and mercenaries and bounty hunters. We’ve got a hundred billion dollar prison industrial complex. We’ve got a multi-trillion dollar surveillance state. We invest staggering amounts of labor and capital into keeping American citizens repressed.

    When Americans rise up, other Americans press down.



  • As I understand it currently, the Straight of Hormuz is open for people not currently at war with Iran.

    You can reach out to the IRGC, put in a request to traverse the Straight, validate that you are not currently an agent of a belligerent in their unlawful bombing and attempted occupation, and then receive a confirmation notice along with a bill for safe passage.

    Iran Charges $1 Per Barrel Toll via Yuan, Stablecoins

    Earlier, the Iranian parliament’s National Security Committee announced on the 30th of last month that it would legislate the strait passage fees. According to the details of the plan reported by Bloomberg, shipping operators wishing to navigate the strait must contact a brokerage company linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and submit details including the ship’s ownership structure, shipping documents, cargo manifest, destination, crew list, and automatic identification system (AIS) data.

    The brokerage company forwards these documents to the Hormozgan Province Command of the Revolutionary Guard’s Navy, which then verifies whether the vessel has any connections to countries Iran considers hostile, such as Israel and the United States. Once this inspection is passed, toll negotiations begin. Iran has categorized countries into grades 1 through 5, with vessels from more friendly nations receiving more favorable terms.

    The initial negotiation price is typically around 1 U.S. dollar per barrel, payable in Chinese yuan or stablecoins. Stablecoins are digital assets pegged 1:1 to the value of fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar or Korean won. Given that a very large crude carrier typically carries 2 million barrels, the toll is expected to be set at a similar level to 2 million U.S. dollars (approximately 3 billion Korean won).

    So it appears that Trump has gotten exactly what he set out to accomplish. Congratulations. Get that man on the deck of the Gerald R. Ford to celebrate.






  • Greater Israel is fully predicated on the US backstopping its existence, both politically and militarily.

    Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and now I guess Syria all align with Israel due to an enormous American boot on their collective necks. As soon as that weight is seen to lift up, you’re going to get a full blown Congolese War between the various tin pot dictators and aristocratic despots.

    Israelis simply don’t have the manpower to control more territory. Their plans to settle the West Bank and Gaza are heavily predicated on damned near every Jew left on earth moving into their domain. And even then - so many of the Israel Jews hate one another, hate their Christian neighbors, hate their Arab co-conspirators, and hate their European financiers. This isn’t sustainable in any material way. Not without the world’s largest economy propping them up.




  • You’re describing Revelations Jesus. And by the time he finally shows up, all the killing’s been done by the Fake Jesus that’s tricked legions of people into damnation.

    This is also the only Gnostic text that made it into the canonical texts. If you get into the actual Gnostic beliefs about Jesus, you’re on a rollercoast ride of spiritualist philosophy bordering on the Sci-Fi. Alternate dimensions, shared souls, astral projection, just all sorts of weird goofy shit that the Council of Nicea cut from the program.

    Revelations is, at its heart, a story of how Rome and its pagans will all eventually get what’s coming to them. That the Christians-Who-Are-Doing-It-Wrong will get what’s coming to them. That the Jews will get what’s coming to them. It is a story wildly out of line with the prior books, but one that resonated strongly with the post-Constantine neo-Christian order.



  • Retribution for what?

    Fighting back.

    Not immediately kowtowing to the wounded narcissist?

    Practically since Reagan, it has been crazy to see how many times the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has done exactly that. The Ayatollah worked with Rumsfeld. He worked with Bush. He worked with Obama. He worked with Trump the first time. He worked with Biden. It’s amazing how many times Iranian leadership could be bought off with the promise of sanctions relief or was willing to turn the other check in the face of a political assassination or a stuxnet computer virus or a frigate seizure.

    Whipped dogs rolled over less frequently than the Iranian government, until we straight up started putting bullets into the heads of their senior leadership. Now the only people left to run the country are the real, actual, not-fucking-around revolutionary diehards.