SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]

“Crises teasingly hold out the possibility of dramatic reversals only to be followed by surreal continuity as the old order cadaverously fights back.”

  • 172 Posts
  • 2.54K Comments
Joined 4 years ago
Cake day: January 3rd, 2022
  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOPtonews@hexbear.net•Bulletins and News Discussion from July 14th to July 20th, 2025 - A Golden Age Of CopperEnglish
    27·
    23 days ago

    I agree to an extent and it’s why even I don’t spend as much time here any more as I used to. I think there’s a decreasing sense of curiosity and an increasing sense of people fitting data-points into their personal theories along the lines of “Here’s why China doing X actually confirms my theory about why it’s going to collapse soon” or “Here’s why Putin is doing Y, this clearly shows he’s abandoned Iran and China, just as I thought.”

    But at the end of the day, it’s not as if those who oppose those people are totally blameless either. To challenge an opposing viewpoint, you can’t merely go “This person is wrong and sucks” because that only creates a void of uncertainty which will inevitably just get filled up again; you have to forcefully assert an equally-if-not-more persuasive theory of reality, with the expertise that requires.

    Do you think MarmiteLover is wrong about Iranian and Israeli military capabilities? You have to become knowledgeable in and post about those things - not just in an argumentative reply-guy sense, but actual top-level comments and analysis about it.

    Do you think xiaohongshu is wrong in regards to multipolarity and dedollarization? You have to assert an alternative economic model of reality that fits the facts better and uses materialist analysis, as well as just generally having a decent degree of knowledge of macroeconomics.

    and so on.

    There’s been quite a few people who have been annoyed by users here and expressed that, but there’s been much less in terms of concerted efforts to be like “No, you’re wrong, and here’s why: insert eight paragraphs here” It can’t merely be looking at somebody saying “Here’s all the reasons China is bad and sucks” and going “Okay, here’s all the reasons China is good!”, you have to also engage with the reasons why China sucks and give satisfying materialist explanations for those things.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOPtonews@hexbear.net•Bulletins and News Discussion from July 7th to July 13th, 2025 - Sanctions on Russia: The SequelEnglish
    23·
    23 days ago

    where Pezeshkian and other top officials were attending a meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

    The fact that they’re still gathering multiple highly important officials in one place is insane. Every high-ranking official in the Resistance should be thinking: no matter how utterly top-secret a facility I think this is, if a dozen bunker busters were to drop on my head at this instant, what actions should I take and how should I organize people and my communication lines to absolutely minimize the damage to the overall organization? If there’s ever A Time Where A Bunch Of Important People Get In A Room And Decide Things, they should do absolutely everything possible to minimize the number of people inside that room and ideally instead have some sort of secure line between isolated officials and protocols that instantly transfer authority in the case of an official not being present (either due to being cut off or being dead)

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOPtonews@hexbear.net•Bulletins and News Discussion from July 7th to July 13th, 2025 - Sanctions on Russia: The SequelEnglish
    40·
    25 days ago

    I agree; I think the understated strength of the US and its proxies is their ability to win peaces even after they lose wars, because their true strength isn’t really military, it’s economy and diplomacy and espionage. The US lost the Korean War, and what happened after? The US lost the Vietnam War, and what happened after? The US lost in Iraq, and what happened after? The US lost in Afghanistan, and what is happening after? Their victories take decades to undo, but their defeats eventually lead to victories by suffocating the victor until they accede to a neoliberal world order. You can fire guns at American soldiers, you can dig tunnels to ambush American squads, you might even shoot down American planes, but shooting the world reserve currency is much, much, much harder.

    In essence: to go to war with America is dangerous, but to make peace with America is catastrophic. I think the decision for the USSR to not go to war against the US was good (as it averted a nuclear war), but I also think the Soviets were just a little too willing to go along with what the Americans clearly wanted to happen; a resource-intensive contest of proxy wars and espionage and counter-espionage and nuke-building that drained the USSR of resources and gradually isolated them. Abandoning Stalin was a critical error in that regard. It’s my main worry in regards to China, too. Binding yourself to rules of engagement will make you weaker if the person you’re fighting is willing to break those rules at a moment’s notice for even the slightest gain, and the US (and its proxies, especially Israel) is absolutely willing to do that, including among the largest terrorist attacks in human history (e.g. the Lebanon pager terrorist attack). I worry that one day, the US will pull out some economic or diplomatic superweapon or new mechanism and all China will do is go “Hey! That’s not fair!” and then proceed to not do anything in retaliation because doing so would break the rules, and if they go low then we go high!

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOPtonews@hexbear.net•Bulletins and News Discussion from July 7th to July 13th, 2025 - Sanctions on Russia: The SequelEnglish
    38·
    30 days ago

    I’m envisioning something like what the UK went through after their empire fell post-WW2, but it’ll be much worse because the UK could still rely to an extent on the new American system of neocolonialism enforced by the IMF and World Bank etc, whereas a shift to Chinese hegemony would, unless the Communist Party is liberalized, meaningfully reduce and eventually end imperialist structures.

    Unfortunately, the ruling classes of the imperial core will use the working class as human shields and pass on as much misery to them as possible (like Thatcher and Reagan but much worse), so I agree with others who conclude that our job is to try and construct community structures to survive this process, even if we fail to create socialist revolutions (and we might not fail!)

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOPtonews@hexbear.net•Bulletins and News Discussion from June 23rd to June 29th, 2025 - Iran, Harden Your Deep Military SitesEnglish
    20·
    1 month ago

    And I’d really like to hear how the Israelis successfully bombed knowledge.

    The Israeli special operation to use the Men In Black memory-wiping device to make every nuclear scientist in Iran forget how nuclear physics works

    Yeah, without any tangible evidence of said “commando operations” this just feels like cope. We all saw how commandos worked out in Gaza and they got their shit kicked in. I have a hard time believing that they did some James Bond-esque infiltration of Iranian nuclear sites and primed every centrifuge to self-destruct or whatever they could possibly be talking about.

    Against surface facilities there were some successful covert operations in the past I believe, but now that everything important is underground, I can’t imagine there’s much you could even do. That’s why Israel and the US had to attempt this in the first place: the era of doing stuxnet shit and slamming drones into surface facilities was over, and a more dangerous military campaign was required with gigantic bombs to even try and breach them. If Israel could have achieved lasting damage to Iran with just covert commando operations then they would have just done that, no need to start a war and attempt forceful strikes on nuclear facilities.

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOPtonews@hexbear.net•Bulletins and News Discussion from June 23rd to June 29th, 2025 - Iran, Harden Your Deep Military SitesEnglish
    84·
    1 month ago
    ‘No survivors’: Israeli media reveals details on latest Hamas ambush in Gaza

    Hebrew media has released new details on the resistance ambush against Israeli forces in south Gaza’s Khan Yunis, in which seven soldiers were burned alive in their troop carrier following an explosive attack claimed by Hamas’s armed wing.

    “At exactly 5:30 pm yesterday, the first report came in about a fire breaking out in an armored personnel carrier (APC) of the POM type, belonging to the engineering forces. Initial investigations suggest that a militant approached the APC and attached an explosive device to it. The device detonated, causing the entire vehicle to catch fire,” Israeli journalist and army radio correspondent Doron Kadosh reported on 25 June.

    “Military firefighting teams rushed to the scene to extinguish the fire in the APC. A D-9 bulldozer was brought in and dumped sand onto the vehicle in an attempt to smother the flames, but all firefighting efforts failed,” Kadosh added.

    After failing to extinguish the flames, rescue forces towed the military vehicle to Israeli territory as it was still on fire with the soldiers inside.

    “The fire was only extinguished once the vehicle had reached Israeli territory. Rescue teams and helicopters were dispatched to the scene, but none of the fighters survived. No one remained to be rescued from the wreckage. All seven soldiers were killed.”

    Kadosh went on to say that it took several hours to identify the bodies of the seven Israeli soldiers.

    Couldn’t have happened to nicer people.

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