someone @ me if we get footage of a merkava getting by a golf cart

if the us loses israel, it loses most of its regional leverage and influence and, following that, a good chunk of the legitimacy that underpins its economic hegemony over the rest of the world. it's not really a question of agency or intention, the reality of the situation is that israel has a game plan (the same one as 2006, as has been its mo since 67, i might add) and that game plan is part of a chain of events in the region that may or may not lead to its ultimate destruction. the us' role and probable intention is to make judgment calls all along this chain of events to preempt the destruction of israel. many of those decisions involve direct intervention.

the apparent 'dragging' of the us lies primarily in the unnecessarily provocative and ultimately self-defeating nature of us/israel doctrine wherein they first target leaders, then civilian infrastructure and population centers, then ground invasion; they still live in an era where the use of violence is an exclusive western privilege that uniformly results in acquiescence wherever applied. this doctrine will only result in larger and larger backlashes against the entity and the associated american interests, resulting in an escalating spiral of conflict that can only end with the self destruction of regional hegemony in the middle east. obviously and objectively the wrong thing to do, but as far as we onlookers can tell, it is the only thing they know.

its stuck strategically. optics are terrible if ukraine is left out to dry so it tries and fails to push europe and nato to directly intervene, israel was getting pummeled strategically and diplomatically and knew it was just a matter of time and so allowed oct 7th to happen so it could do atrocity porn to draw the us in and save itself, meanwhile the one thing the us actually wants to do is start a proxy war in the pacific but the japanese and pinoy dogs arent barking as loud as the us would like.

the sarmat and df tests i think were just messages to the us that if it really wants to get stuck in, itll have to be in the middle east again. in this way kursk and the various israeli atrocities were also signals for the us to intervene more actively, since if the situation were actually tenable for western proxies then there would tangible progress on the ground instead of hollow symbolic victories designed to be spun as positively as possible.

feels like rest of nato is just waiting for us to go in on israel so they can finally turn the tables and get out from under the americans.

some people think it was to make up for sarmat's failure, i think it was just to scare usians off from doing something dumb in westpac

there is conjecture that the best case resistance axis result is to keep the kinetic stuff mostly contained until the us elections and with some luck have all the internal contradictions resolve themselves through civil war that doesn't affect the rest of the world

failing that, the next best case would be to have the us get bogged down in another losing war in the middle east, the logic being that military keynesianism is a lot less effective if no one's scared of your military

also of note are that the egyptian air force is buying chinese now and the algerians have been fairly close militarily with russia as of 2022 when they did their joint drills near gibraltar

will be interesting to see how these two turn out when shit does hit the fan

idk about easing home buying, theyre mostly propping up new urban properties with discounts and shit so that real estate doesnt die so fast that it takes the rest of the economy with it

wish theyd do something about used home prices tho :/

rural properties still mostly impossible to buy outside of very capital intensive ventures

japanese elections coming up soon, awkward timing wrt us elections plus recently sacked destroyer captain for violating chinese waters

atypical of the most loyal american dog

was the kishida resignation the first stage in japanese decolonization? play for time and wait out the empire's next move in westpac before taking a side materially

yeah this was my take as well, one for the proles and one for the bourg, shut everyone up for a while and see how things pan out

id call em cowards but its probably the smart thing to do considering how shits going down wrt the entity

quantitative easing

qe with chinese characteristics incoming, though it doesn't seem as big as the libs would have liked it

prebubble mortgage rates getting lowered to match current ones

will be interesting to see where the money goes this time

the accusations of spying were always kinda sus since all phones can spy and its something readily regulatable, but i cant believe this of all things is the reason they insist on banning chinese phones lmfao

ur-fascist batman was already wringing his hands at the thought of turning ubiquitous communication devices into a panopticon but israel has somehow managed to outfash the bat

literally cartoon villain shit

this is just the empire signalling that its lost this round and is doing pregame setup up for the next round before lowering rates.

things will start getting interesting this next rate cycle. the empire wanted to have their cake and eat it too and so instead of volcker shock 2.0 and a corresponding return to profitability we got whatever pathetic garbage the past year or two have been. this next cycle they might actually get their shit together but consensus opinion seems to be too little too late.

the echo your sentiments: ultimately, the dollar is the result of hegemonic privilege, not the cause. the us did not invent the dollar and in so doing become the hegemon, rather it became hegemonic and only afterwards did the dollar come into being as an emergent property of hegemony. it is an expression of imperial dominance, not a basis. accordingly, excess fixation on its exorbitant privilege as a metric of imperial robustness is missing the forest for the trees.

so here is some counter cyclical copium for my news mega comrades, it's a chinese nationalist dongbei dude ranting about geopolitics, fairly popular on tiktok as an alternative for the less academically inclined viewers. think not boring mercouris with a funny (hillbilly) accent doing things that aren't just summarizing telegram.

i can define nouns for people if there is any confusion

chiming in here, one guy got absolutely torn apart for a perfectly adequate solution that elon didn't like the looks of. literally, did not enjoy the visual aesthetics of an engineering solution. huge fucking tantrum, entire team + other seniors present, dude quit a while later. many such stories. most people just put up with it, were a few legends who walked out on him. was more unstable when he was younger. gave all his engineers ptsd and daddy issues...

the critical window has not arrived yet. every other cycle of accumulation has undergone a gradual geographic transition of the core only after the extant capitalist system was thoroughly in the process of collapsing in on itself, heralded mostly by a withering in overall trade volume and corresponding with widespread conflict and a retreat into everyone's respective national economies

so basically, we're waiting for the us to sanction/declare war on china

in the meantime, so long as the powers behind the us political classes remain incapable of formulating a new framework of hegemony, the dollar will only continue to decline, taking the world economy along with it

apocryphally, jttw itself was a satirization of ming bureaucracy through its depiction of the conflict between tang era buddhist and taoist factions of divinity

a lot of issues were overcome on the journey are the result of some god's pettiness/fuckup

theres a fan theory out there that the game is a plot by wukong and erlang shen to overthrow heaven

so what im hearing is iran retaliation eta q2 2025 earliest

nothing ever happens gang stays winning

is this just a proto turtle? is there a word for the turtle equivalent for carcinization again? chelonization?