Indrajit Samarajiva

1. The Genocidal Gerontocracy

I was in the car with my parents and kids and my kids were like "who's in charge here?" It's a good question, though they just wanted to resolve some inane point of order like 'whose feather is this?' The best rationale we could settle on for self-governance was averageness. We added up the ages of everyone in the car (6, 7, 41, 70, 72) and divided by 5, giving about 40. AKA me. This seems obvious enough in a car, but not in any political cartography. That's one reason the whole clown car they call the 'rules-based order' is crashing.

If you look at the vehicle of state, the dying White Empire is driven by a visibly dying octogenarian, as are many 'liberal' democracies. These 'democracies' are actually naturally conservative. Rulers fail upwards forever and pass on power to their children. There are lower age limits on civic rights but no upper, so people literally die in their seats, thinking they can take it all with them. And so they actually do. This ending generation is ending the world with them, leaving everybody else with the consequences.

In Foundation, Isaac Asimov (and the new show runners) imagined this demographic problem quite graphically. He posited one ruler, composed of three identical clones, decanted at different times. Brother Dawn, Brother Dusk, and Brother Day. Brother Day rules the day to day, with advice from Dusk (the old ruler) and with Dawn in training (the next in line). They each took turns, and the Galactic Empire rules (ruled?) for centuries. It was the reign of Cleon, the clone king. The middle-aged Cleon is always in charge, which is of course science fiction.

The White Empire we live in is ruled by some rounding error (pick a Vice-President for Obama that doesn't scare white people!) who is 81 years old and cannot physically climb stairs, but who can mount a good old-fashioned genocide. The alternative is 77 years old, probably humps chairs, and is also down for an old-fashioned genocide. WTF are we even doing? If we were on a road trip, would we put these embarrassing grandfathers in charge? No way. But that's who's steering the ship of state. They're good representatives, I guess. The White Empire is visibly dying. It's a global gerontocracy.

Globally, people who—with all due respect—can't pee straight, are expected to rule the fate of millions, if not billions. I can certainly understand on an advisory level, but executive? They're literally losing executive function. And Allah knows governing is just tiring. Old people should honestly just chill and be with their grandchildren. I can't even understand the motive for clinging to power until you die. What's the point of the thing? The lord dies clutching power, and it's just a one-way ticket to hell, guaranteed. Best to repent while you can, and let someone younger take the lead (and the blame).

Anyways, getting out of the car, we decided to go for a river bath and then my mother started getting swept away by the current. My daughter screamed 'Achchi's drowning' and it quickly dawned on me that this was not her usual bullshit screaming about inanities. This was an actual auntie emergency. My father was sitting there frozen, thankfully, else I'd have two problems. I pushed across the current and got my mother to the other side. Then we waited around for some people to help her get back across, while my children got devoured by sand flies lol.

It makes you think, doesn't it? I'm definitely not the smartest person in the family, but I'm the least physically and mentally retarded, for lack of a better word. I learn slower than my kids and know less than my parents, but I am simply average enough to be the most useful for most situations. My parents have more brains than me and my children have more heart, but my body simply works better. I literally bow to my parents and serve my children, but I am undoubtably the most competent of the lot, just by the law of averages. This is of course no match for the law of compounding interest, which largely explains the unequal and old state of the world we're in.

The great problem of this era is that our parents' generation will, on average, always be richer (and thus more powerful) than us. It's simply the power of compounding interest. It's like Fry in Futurama who had $0.93 in his savings account in 1999 and $4.3 billion in 2999, when he woke up. You can't beat compounding interest. Time is money, and older people simply have more of it 'saved' up. In bank accounts, investments, property, or education. All of this stuff used to be affordable and now it's largely unattainable assets.

The only real wealth transfer happening during the White Empire is when rich peoples kids literally inherit the wealth, or have their parents buy them a home, or an education that costs as much as a home, or fund their first, second, and third businesses until they can be 'self-made'. Modern soothsayers with spreadsheets (economists) ignore the one economic rule that survived the bronze ages (regular debt jubilees) to our collective ruin. As they knew in the Bronze Ages (re: Michael Hudson), a society without debt jubilees just ends up in debt slavery and collapse. The entire experiment of modern White Empire, carrying over from the Romans, is seeing what would happen if interest compounded forever, which is a mathematical impossibility (re: Sessi's chessboard)., But Ponzi schemes are good fun unless you're holding the bag. And if you've died before the music stops, all the better. You literally got away with it. That seems to be the plan.

My friend once told me the most revolutionary thing you could do would be to kill your grandparents, and the thought makes me shiver, but it makes sense. The trouble is that the people who have the least actually invested in the future have the most investments. The people that have the least stake in the future won't give up control without a stake through their hearts. They're really trying to live forever, and take it all with them when they go. The Empire is run by gerontocrats, people that should be playing with their grandchildren and not burying children in rubble. But here we are.

I don't mean my grandparents or your grandparents, my God, obviously other other grandparents. I mean that inchoate gerontocracy of reruns that runs the Empire at the heart of it all. I'm not saying younger people would run Empire better—it's a dumpster fire by design—but they certainly couldn't run it worse. They might park the bus rather than driving it off a cliff. It's not that 'adults' are more advanced than the elderly or the young, they're just—on average—a bit less retarded. Which is the best you can hope for in this reign of clone Emperors literally decomposing in front of us, taking the world with them when they go.

2. The Impact Of Iran's Hits On 'Israel'

The point of Iran's hits on 'Israel' wasn't carnage. It was communication. They told the enemy they were going to hit them, let them get ready, and then hit them anyways. The point of these hits wasn't mayhem. It was to send a message. The message is that Iran can hit 'Israel'. 'Israel's' air defenses are not impregnable. This was all rumored and reported, but now Iran has proven it. 'Israel's' entire existence depends on deterrence and Iran was not deterred. This, for 'Israel', is an existential problem. The point is not that buildings were blown up. It's that the whole security architecture surrounding 'Israel' is gone.

Power Projection

What Iran has just done is project power. For decades 'Israel' has bombed whoever they want in the region and everybody had to just take it. Now Iran has bombed 'Israel' itself, in the first real instance of 'what goes around, comes around'. Iran has told 'Israel' that 'we can hit you wherever we want, whenever we want, and Daddy Yankee can't do anything about it.' If the Al Aqsa Flood of October 7th lit the fire, April 14th was the 'gasolina'.

As Major General Salami (of Iran) said:

"Our information on all of the hits is not complete yet but on that part of the hits that we have accurate, documented and field-related reports show that this operation has been carried out with a success that exceeded the expectation," said Salami.

He said that the IRGC was capable of carrying out a large operation against Israel but it opted for a more restricted and limited one to hit Israeli resources that had been used for an airstrike on an Iranian consulate in Syria earlier this month which killed senior Iranian military commanders.

Iran has shown that they could have destroyed Nazi Knesset, they could have killed Netanyahu hiding in a billionaire's bunker, they could have blown up hospitals, if they were deranged enough to think of such things. They didn't do any of these things because they're disciplined and strategic, unlike 'Israel', which is following America's post-WWII strategy of carpet bombing, ie state terrorism. Iran did not blanket 'Israel' in bombs, but hit the very places that hit them on April 1st, proportionally, strategically, and telegraphed well in advance to avoid casualties. This is what deterrence actually looks like. It's a message, not a massacre.

As Iran's deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri said, "Israel needs to know that in case of another mistake, they will not have 12 days, the response will be given in matter of seconds not in days or hours." This is a fundamental change in the balance of power in the region. For decades Empire has been bombing everyone and saying "what the fuck are you going to do about it?" Iran has finally said "something."

The New Balance Of Power

Empire has already lost the seas to the Yemenis and the land to Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. Air supremacy was all they had left, and now that bubble is rapidly deflating. All the kings horses and all the kings men cannot put Humpty together again. Of all the Empire's outposts, 'Israel' has the most air defenses, and even that plus the combined air forces of the US, UK, France, and Jordan couldn't overcome the world's largest drone swarm followed by missiles. And these weren't even Iran's best, newest weapons. Iran has gotten a lot of information about its enemy, while its enemy has got nothing. As A7 Mira puts it, "this was not the maximum offensive power of Iran, but this was the maximum defensive power of 'Israel'".

Iran targeted the most protected locations in Empire—Nevatim and Ramon Air Bases and Air Force Intelligence HQ—and hit them directly. As Scott Ritter said, "Iran put five medium range ballistic missiles on target in Nevatim air base. Nevatim is the most heavily defended spot in the world from the threat of ballistic missiles. Defenses that were optimized to defeat Iranian missiles. And yet five got through."

'Israel' claims '99% shot down' but they just spent over a billion dollars to shoot down a few million worth of decoys, that was just an L given a press release. The entire paradigm of imperial air superiority has been that they can shoot almost anything down, but what's been revealed in Yemen and now over 'Israel' is that their enemy has to send million dollar missiles to shoot down cheap drones. One way of winning a war is depleting your enemy's matériel, and expensive air missiles vs. cheap drones is just a rapid method of Pyrrhicizing yourself.

Adversaries are learning that they can simply inundate western defenses. Yemen, Iran, and Russia are proving it. They have lost naval supremacy in the Red Sea, land supremacy over rump Europe, and air supremacy over 'Israel'. The point of good defenses are that you don't have to use them, people are too scared. Now that illusion is shattered. As Master Sun said,

"winning a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the best possible outcome. Best is to subdue the enemy's troops without ever engaging them on the battlefield."

What the White Empire is doing everywhere isn't art of war, it's amateur hour. They're getting embarrassingly clobbered everywhere, and clobbering innocents. After six months of watching children being murdered, even their privatized propaganda can't contain the horseshit. And so the final air defense is collapsing, their command of the airwaves.

On top of air defense, the White Empire always ran media air cover, legitimizing their illegitimacy. They were able to explain that they were self-defending themselves against people thousands of miles away, and that their genocidal colony 'Israel' was just trying to survive amidst savage natives. This somehow worked for a while, but not anymore. Now 'Israel' is openly massacring hospitals, while the supposed Axis of Evil is being imminently reasonable and hitting military targets. People can see what's going on and—worst of all for Empire's privatized propaganda—they can see that the western media is lying to them. The Empire has no clothes and is obviously tooting its own horn.

Hence David Cameron—the unelected Foreign Minister of the unelected Prime Minister of an unelected head of State—just looks like a nonce when he says Iran is doing a 'reckless and dangerous thing' and then, in the next breath says the UK would take 'very strong action' if its own consulate was flattened. These are the people 'defending democracy', they can't even get their lies straight. Democracy™ was obviously a Trojan horse left by colonial oligarchs, and now everyone can see it's just a pile of colonizers under an even bigger pile of horseshit.

What happened on April 14th was that Iran responded to a clear attack with clear legitimacy, given that the rabid 'Israeli's' bombed a consulate on April 1st. The 'Israelis' violated a diplomatic convention that goes back thousands of years, and the world can see this. Furtherfuthermore, the whole world has seen 'Israel' and the whole White Empire relentlessly massacring civilians for six months now, and Iran honestly has a duty to protect, as do all (actually) free countries. The West is still throwing up propaganda about Iran's response being 'unprovoked' and 'destabilizing the region', but their media power is collapsing along with their air defenses. They're still launching million dollar morons into the airwaves, but everybody can see the reality on the ground.

The End

Land, naval, and air supremacy were how White Empire enforced white supremacy, how they made it seem like a fait accompli. But all of those supremacies are shattered now, and all that's left is naked violence against innocent men, women, and children. All that's left is a lot of pointless killing on the way to their own funeral. The best Empire can hope for now is a nuclear murder-suicide. Their days of conquest are done.

What we are thus living through is the final denouement of White Empire, imploding at home and overextended abroad. We're lucky to 'live' through it, because thousands are still dying under the rubble, and millions if not billions more are fated to go. White supremacist empires sure go down ugly, and this is the ugliest of all. The comparatively short and tame Nazi Empire killed more people after WWII was obviously lost (in Stalingrad) than while they were winning. In the same way, the German's inspiration and heirs in America seem determined to go down the same way, rage, raging against the dying of the White (to massacre Dylan Thomas).

The legacy of the centuries-old totalitarian racist slave state of America has not been reconciliation or reparations, it has been exporting its genocidal violence across the globe while superficially diversifying its 1%. Now it is going out the way it came in, with genocidal violence and mass atrocities. Appealing to the conscience of this unconscionable abomination is pointless, the only language White Empire understands is resistance, including armed. That's the message that Iran has sent in a quite disciplined way, that it too can speak, and that Empire's days of disciplining the region are done. Coupled with body blows on multiple fronts, the impact of Iran on Empire is profound. Gone are the days of fucking around, raining death from above like gods. This is the age of finding out.

3. How The White Empire Is Going White Dwarf

This is a long, extended metaphor comparing the sunsetting of American (re: White) Empire to the sunsetting of, well, the sun. Our sun, like America, is a violent superpower that will at some point implode. Before that point, however, it will expand in a toxic bubble of firepower; precisely what's happening to America now.

The White Dwarf

Our sun, like any star, actually gets brighter as it's dying. The balance between fusion (pushing out) and gravity (pushing in) means that more and more hydrogen gets cronched in the center even as there's less and less of it. The sun gets brighter precisely as it's burning out. In about 5 billion years, the inner core will run out of hydrogen and suck in H from the outer core, allowing it a penultimate gasp of growth. This great greedy gobble will toss Venus and probably Earth in the oven, though life life here would have been already been air-fried 4 billion years before. At this point, the Sun will be a red giant, and have the deserted Earth for dessert.

After another 2 billion years, this red giant will run out of H for reals, but switch it for the celestial equivalent of fentanyl, helium. The sun will then contract down once again start giving off 10x as much energy. Better to burn out than to fade away, as the poets say. This last high will last about 500 million years, until the same cannibalization process plays out again. Gravity will suck in any last helium from its outer layers, and the sun will expand again, roasting everything in its plume. The Earth, then, will surely be subsumed.

When there's finally no more H and no more He, that'll be the end of our fiery deity. The sun that drifted together from solar dust will return whence it came. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. All that will be left is a hot and cooling ball of carbon at the center of what used to be it all. A white dwarf.

The White Empire

In the same way, America is doomed to implode, but not before it incinerates all its satellites. I call America the White Empire because, to the people on the boot end of Europeans and their colonies, what's the difference? The White Empire began by sucking resources from the solar rich to the solar poor peninsula of Europe. This was the first point of fusion, swirling slaves, molasses, and rum into a Satanic alchemy of avarice. Europeans incarnated their greed as corporations and let those djinns run riot over entire continents, sucking energy back to the imperial core. This fusion of 'renewable' energy was highly potent and it burned brighter every year. They called this the 'age of discovery' but it was just destruction deferred.

This first wave of colonization went on and on for hundreds of years and yet it somehow wasn't enough. As much as ships drew in resources from the rest of the world and radiated manufactured goods out, it was never, ever enough, even as populations within the imperial core remained generally impoverished. The spoilt grandchildren of one Queen began fighting over the spoils and nearly spoiled it all in World War I. That violent explosion ended with Germany being run out of resources and deep into debt, into an energy deficit. Soon enough they responded like any dying star, by cannibalizing the vicinity.

Germans got the bright idea of colonizing Europe. Hitler saw that all the good global resources were gone and thought he'd grab what he could where he could, while it was possible. Nazism is presented as some unique evil but it wasn't, much worse had been happening to colored people for centuries and, indeed, continues to this day. All that happened in World War II was that White Empire burned hot enough to fuse the outer imperial core itself, with Germany pulling in nations like France, Czechoslovakia, etc. Better to burn out than to fade away, you know the refrain.

America won World War II in the sense that it conquered Europe (beware of Americans saying they 'liberated' anything), assimilated the Nazis, and continued Hitler's main priority of fighting communists and Slavs. In truth WWII continued for decades after from Korea to South America to the Cold War, but they stopped calling it 'war' because it was not amongst white people. And so the dying star of White Empire expanded again, becoming a red giant devouring the world, paradoxically by fighting actual 'reds'. The colonial project of America continued the general colonial project, pulling in even more resources from the Middle East, from debt-enslaved Africa, from constantly couped South America, from all over the world. White Empire briefly enveloped the entire Earth, and has sucked away the Earth's climate in the process.

And so here America is, with no more easy resources to burn. They've already consumed their own continent and are fracking their last vein of fossil fuels. The only solution is to start enough hot wars to fuse 'heavier' elements, to get that old spark of World War back again, for one more violent expansion before the slow burn into irrelevance. So now America has consumed Germany again, and is trying to drag Japan out of pacifism. They're getting the old genocidal band back together, because they're on a mission from Satan. America has blown up Germany's pipeline and economy and made the Japanese PM bow before the people that nuked them. They'll let 'Israel' bring on the actual apocalypse with red heifers and child sacrifice before giving up an inch of imperial ambitions. Anything, anything for a few more moments in the sun.

So as it dies, Empire is burning brighter than before. American Empire is outgassing to incinerate its satellites in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific. It has sucked in all available firepower to Ukraine, while cutting its vassals off from cheap energy and leaving them to shrivel on the vine. America is making its 'allies' look like diplomatic degenerates to defend their most violent vassal, 'Israel'. It's forcing aircraft carriers like Australia to cut themselves off from their main trading partner (China) and pay for their own occupation. The Empire is dying from the provinces first, as empires go. As Tyson Yunkaporta says, "Civilisations are cultures that create cities, communities that consume everything around them and then themselves."

The cannibalization of Europe (and Japan and South Korea, if they allow it) gives America a last burst of gas, but they're simply running out of steam at home. America has been printing fake money to paper over real problems since at least 2008 and funny money can only delay serious tragedy so long. America's resources are increasingly consumed on dead people abroad, old people at home, and old debts. They're the definition of an old and dying star. There's this vain idea that, as a reserve currency, America can just keep printing resources forever, but everything runs out of reserves at some point. Even stars. When it finally implodes and burns out all that will be left is a shit stain of carbon in the fossil record, and hopefully not too much radioactivity, inshallah.

White Heat

White Empires, white dwarfs, it is—as my historical thesis goes—same shit different day. Metaphors work not just because they're easy for humans to understand, they're also the signs Allah leaves along the way. The apocalyptic faiths are all surely right in the end, the sun does consume us in fire and the world ends well before then. You can 'know' this scientifically and yet people still don't believe. In eschatological as well as geological timescales, the end of the world is not a speculation, it's a certainty. And on our immediate political timescale, the end of this world is an extremely high probability. I honestly thought it would take decades, but Americans are speed-running collapse, like they do everything. America could actually implode in a relatively chill way like the Soviets, but that's not how they be. America was the evil empire and God knows they're going down ugly.

What we're seeing now is not America making itself great again, but its great undoing. Paradoxically—like a dying star—that means it burns even brighter as it bleeds. America is cannibalizing allies, genociding innocents, and violently impaling itself against enemies. They rage, rage, against the dying of the White, they do not go gentle into that good night. Its rich will keep getting richer till the very end, but without doing anything productive. They simply don't have the energy. And so it ends, inshallah without ending everything. As Oasis said, "Someday you will find me caught beneath the landslide, In a champagne supernova, a champagne supernova in the sky."

4. The Power Of Blood Sacrifice

I think of Jesus often. I think of how the Romans and their Jewish client state thought they defeated Jesus by killing him. Not just defeated him, but humiliated him, left him out there to be publicly tortured, mocked, and shamed. They crucified him like a slave. But look at the world now. Rome's dominion is gone and we live in Anno Domini. Allah turned the greatest L into the greatest W. Jesus triumphed over death and left that Empire in the dust. I think about that today.

Today, America and their Jewish client state think they can defeat Palestinians by genociding them. Not merely killing them, but starving them to death, making them suffer and die without food, water, medicine, or sanitation. As the cowardly Yoav Gallant said, announcing the whole thing, "No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly." The concentration camp became an extermination camp after the inmates dared rebel.

Six months later, the 'Israeli's are still trying to genocide the entire civilian population of Gaza, burying masses under rubble, condemning them to a slow, painful death, and letting famine and disease take the rest. As Giora Eiland quite openly published, "severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers." 'Israel's' other goal, presented as a 'moderate' solution by casual colonizers like Yuval Noah Harari, is ethnic cleansing the women and children to the desert and slaughtering the men. The bloodlust is quite common across the 'Israeli' population, its 'left' and 'right' are really just left and right boots, stomping on a human face forever.

The point of it all is re-establishing the deterrence that was lost after the brave rebellion of October 7th, much like the Romans crucified all of a man's slaves if one dared slay their master. When Pedanius Secondus was slain (seemingly with good reason), all of his 400 slaves were publicly put to death, men, women, and children. Can you not hear the refrain, in the slavery of our times? It is, as my historical thesis goes, same shit, different day. The American Senate acts now as the Roman Senate did then. Just hear Tacitus explain:

While no one member ventured to controvert the opinion of Cassius, he was answered by a din of voices, expressing pity for the numbers, the age, or the sex of the victims, and for the undoubted innocence of the majority. In spite of all, the party advocating execution prevailed; but the decision could not be complied with, as a dense crowd gathered and threatened to resort to stones and firebrands. The Caesar then reprimanded the populace by edict, and lined the whole length of road, by which the condemned were being marched to punishment, with detachments of soldiers.

Today American Senators can't go anywhere without attracting angry constituents, but they're all so legally corrupt that it doesn't matter. The President reprimands the populace as 'antisemites' while lining the whole Middle East with aircraft carriers. The collective punishment of Gaza has been televised and live-streamed for six months now, like a drawn out crucifixion. The cruelty is the point. They want the upstart slaves to suffer and they want us all to see, to stop any other slaves from upstarting. As Gaius Cassius argued in 61 AD (not knowing how time would be measured):

Now that our households comprise nations — with customs the reverse of our own, with foreign cults or with none, you will never coerce such a medley of humanity except by terror. — 'But some innocent lives will be lost!' — Even so; for when every tenth man of the routed army drops beneath the club,​ the lot falls on the brave as well. All great examples carry with them something of injustice — injustice compensated, as against individual suffering, by the advantage of the community.

The Romans were at least an honest empire, whereas the American pretend like they don't have one at all. "Aw shucks, just helping out". To get truth from the Americans you have to hold a mirror up to their lies, because everything is inverted. Every accusation is, in fact, a confession. America's 'War On Terror' is in fact a genocidal Terror War, meant to 'coerce a medley of humanity by terror.' Most of the people they call terrorists are in fact just terroirists, defending their land from carbon crusaders. 'Israel' is just Terror Jr., a traumatized population that Europeans rejected and literally deported, given the copyright to colonization as reparations. And they have taken their master's policy to the point of historical absurdity. The contradictions are now too much, and in projecting such cruel power, they are in fact losing it all.

Like a public, drawn-out crucifixion—where the cruelty and humiliation is the point—'Israel' has drawn out its atrocities against the Palestinian public for so long that even the liberal imperial core is having indigestion now. People have watched the precious child Hind surviving amidst the slaughter of her family in a car, while 'Israel' attacked the rescue workers, before finally being murdered herself, terrifying hours later. People have watched the Al Shifa Hospital being attacked not once but twice, as part of 'Israel's' general policy of medical massacres.

All of these war crimes are not mere executions, they are public torture and a vile attempt at humiliation, like a crucifixion. Of course, the imperial core can watch crucifixions all day long, it's the main programming in the Cable-TV Colosseum. Every week a rotating cast of migrants, Muslims, Russians, and Chinese are trotted out to be hated and attacked, each episode going into reruns for decades now. But you can't show the same crucifixion for six months in a row. That gets boring and, after a point, embarrassing.

What finally changed things for this celebrity obsessed culture was a celebrity chef's crew being bombed not once but thrice, hunted through a supposedly safe zone like prey. You can bomb hospitals and refugee camps, but you can't fuck with the Washington elites dinner reservations! That's a red line for these people. Injustice was fine when it was against slaves and subhumans, but once it started messing with the "advantage of the community", that's when it had to stop. And now the western media's tune has changed. The killers are losing the imperial core and, worst of all, even more 'slaves' are in open rebellion.

Rebellion has only spread across 'the unity of the fields', from Yemen to Lebanon to Iran to Iraq to Syria to even Jordan. Hamas and its allies like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, etc are still resisting bravely, and televising that too. It's as if the crucified had RPGs and were lighting up centurions. This is not the message they were trying to send at all! They meet their fate on the road they took to avoid it. Deterrence doesn't work if the people are undeterred. Then the cruelty just appears pointless, and the people executing it look weaker rather than stronger. Then, rather than humiliated slaves, there's imperial blood in the water and, indeed, 'Israel' and America have lost the whole Red Sea entirely.

At this point, the suffering of the Palestinian people has become what the Resistance frequently calls 'an epic'. As the PFLP said: "In response to all this, our people have decisively replied that resistance is the means to deter the occupation, restore our legitimate rights, and the Al-Aqsa Flood epic constitutes one of the advanced and shining stations of our people's struggle, which history will inscribe in golden letters." Or as Hamas leader Osama Hamdan said, "the Nazi enemy has failed to break the will and steadfastness of our great people rooted in their land and has been unable to diminish the strength and resolve of the Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, Saraya Al-Quds, and the Palestinian resistance, who have inscribed an epic of heroism, dignity, and pride for our people and nation."

Even as the children and grandchildren of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh were killed in another cowardly 'Israeli' airstrike, this is what he had to say:

I thank Allah for this honor that He bestowed upon us through the martyrdom of my three sons and grandchildren. With this pain and blood, we create hope, a future, and freedom for our people, our cause, and our nation. My martyred sons attained the honor of the time, the honor of the place, and the honor of the conclusion. My children stayed with our people in the Gaza Strip and did not leave the Strip.

All our people and all the families of Gaza residents have paid a heavy price with the blood of their children, and I am one of them. Nearly 60 members of my family ascended as martyrs, like all the Palestinian people, and there is no difference between them. The occupation believes that by targeting the sons of leaders, it will break the resolve of our people. We say to the occupation that this blood will only make us more steadfast in our principles and adherence to our land.

The enemy will not succeed in their goals and the castles will not fall. What the enemy failed to extract through killing, destruction, and genocide, they will not take in negotiations. The enemy is delusional if they think that by killing my sons we will change our positions. The blood of my sons is not more precious than the blood of our martyred people in Gaza, for they are all my sons.

The blood of my sons is a sacrifice on the path to liberating Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa. We will not hesitate and will not retreat, and we will continue on our way to liberate Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa...

How do you fight this? Morally, politically, militarily, the Empire has just lost. These people are righteous and the Empire is just wrong. The latest incarnation of White Empire has tried to impose power through blood, but all they have done here is unleash the greater power of blood sacrifice against themselves, and it cannot be contained now. As an Empire which nominally claims to follow Christ the lamb, they should know what an awesome power this is. Martyrs live forever and blood sacrifice can topple the greatest powers. And America isn't even great anymore. Their Navy has lost to Yemen, their Army has lost to Afghanistan, and while their Air Force is still winning against poor people without air defenses, this is a Pyrrhic victory and a moral abomination. Meanwhile, economically, they're begging China 'please Hammer, don't hurt 'em' and have sanctioned themselves into a corner. They're taking L after L and their only Ws come from beating up children. They're not projecting power at this point, they're just projecting.

Human sacrifice—blood sacrifice—is a terrible force, a powerful force since time immemorial. Empires can play with blood if they win (and thus write the history), but if they do it and lose, well then, those empires get written out of history entirely. That's where we are now. At the end of 'Israel', at the end of America, at the end of the continuous White Empire that has oppressed us for so long, in so many contiguous forms. The end will be a beggar's breakfast because they've ruined the entire planet, but the fever dream will break before too long, inshallah. History is being written as we speak, in the only ink that seems indelible. In the human sacrifice of innocents, in the murder of martyrs, in the red red ink of blood.

5. Stupid Cat And Great God

I left a chicken to thaw in the sink, covered with a cutting board, and went to sleep. I wondered why the cat didn't come to bed, but at least nobody was pouncing on my feet. Turns out that the maid had removed the board and the cat was downstairs, having a fancy feast…

"A cat in Dragonese is called 'miaowla'. Dragonese is the languge dragons speak," by Luna. "10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 blast off! The cat zoomed into space! He zoomed past the planets, and he zoomed past the stars and the sun! He cept on zooming and zooming thru space," by Miro. Excuse me, I'm single-parenting the kids for the moment and they've taken over. As I was saying,

The cat had dragged the chicken—weighing nearly as much itself—all the way across the room and onto the rug, which is where I found it in the morning. The cat had just ripped through the bag and was happily chawing on a wing. Luckily he hadn't gotten any further. Is this chicken halal anymore? Was it now, technically, carrion? And what do I do with this cat? He's unhygienic, ungrateful, and constantly getting into trouble. In a very small way, this must be how Allah feels. They're trying to help humans and we're just stupid and dirty and ungrateful about it.

I think, then, of the Garden of Eden, and our own garden. We let the cat wander around the garden on the condition that he stays there, because outside are cars and canines and death and injury. But the cat doesn't listen, and I don't know how to communicate to him. How do I explain anything? I'm not saying I'm on a higher level than the cat, if anything animals are closer to God. I'm just pointing out the differences in communication between different types of beings.

One point against religion is that it's not literally true but what does that mean? Why would the truth of the universe fit into the grunts and scribbles of apes? Is the number 7 'true'? Is 'apple' an apple? When I say "aaaah!" to the cat when it jumps on the stove is that literally true? No, it would be more like "rwwaooow" in cat language, and even that is just a symbolic representation of the pain I want the creature to be avoiding.

Science posits its truth as superior because it's accurate, but at what level? If you get down to the quantum or universal level it's all fuzzy again. Science is really like a child who found his father's gun and brought it to school, which is not good for actual learning. Science thinks it's great because it can split the atom, but then uses this power for the basest things. Melting the flesh off human bones and powering toaster ovens for a few years at the price of toxic waste for aeons. How much thinking are we doing without understanding? How much doing without even a thought to our undoing? What's the point of getting the details right and missing the bigger picture entirely?

Science and modernity look down on stories and poetry and feelings, but does this not speak to a higher truth, which is more than the sum of its parts? If God was looking at us creatures—who live in stories and dreams and imaginings—how else would They explain things? Would explaining the scientific structure and creation of the universe A) make sense to people and B) be wise to tell them? In short, would it help or be helpful? This was a core question the Buddha asked himself, and some questions he simply didn't answer. Not necessarily because he didn't know, but because we didn't need to. This is an entirely foreign concept to western philosophy, which insists on jamming its finger into every socket, like a toddler with nuclear weapons and a God complex.

The fact is that for the most important questions in life, science has no good answers. You can see people today trying to cobble diet and parenting and 'mental health' out of science and it's just exhausting. And then you can see science digging up every grave on earth, lighting bodies on fire, and incinerating the climate. And its only answer is to dig up other stuff and kill everyone a bit slower and thus 'renewably'. People say that science 'just works', but does it? To invert the saying, what is works without faith? Just a monkey with a switchblade, let loose across the face of God's creation. Or like a cat with a chicken on the living room floor.

What I see in the cat is gaps in perception, and the difficulty of communicating across them. I also get the urge to just smite everybody and be done with it. How do you keep someone you care for in the garden? How do you protect them when they leave? How do I get the cat and dog to not fight each other, though it's really in their own best interests? You might be a 'higher' power, but you still have to 'lower' yourself to communicate on their level, and they have to reach out to you first. Meow and you shall receive. But the cat is, of course, an ancient god and takes no notice of me at all.

I just clean up the mess and try to get some praying and writing in before the children wake up which, as you can see in the intro, I failed at. There truly are signs everywhere, though we speed past them in our haste to get nowhere quickly. With children, with the pets, with all my duties of care, I can feel the caring presence of God. Of course, like most humans, I usually reject these messages in my arrogance and haste.

God gives us more than enough but we insist on dragging chickens out of the sink to eat them on the rug like ingrates. We insist on dragging every animal out of creation and ever mineral out of the earth and our reckoning is surely more than getting sprayed with a water bottle. There's a literal flood coming, and I'm not cleaning that up. The arc of history is long and it bends towards arks. We've been given the message enough. Now God is taking things quite literally.

6. The Illusion Of Control

When I wake up the cat follows me downstairs and I let the dog in and they both get into some form of chaos while I'm trying to pray. If I'm lucky, no one's destroyed the tissue boxes or taken a sneaky shit. On a good day, they just chase each other around and under me while I'm trying to prostrate. One should be so blessed, really. It's a curse to take yourself seriously.

Then I see the old man, 94-years old now, with the great-grandchildren crawling all over him. They have no idea 'who' he is at all, and don't care. He's had a long and well-respected career, but it ends like this, surrounded by rodents demanding cheese. In old age the greatest reward is not reputation among your (disappearing) peers, but the mere presence of the next generation, who will love you even if you have only a tin of biscuits and a kind heart left to your name. I should be so lucky, some day, inshallah.

I think then, of our assassinated uncle, honestly the best uncle, and how he won't see his own grandchildren. How is that fair? He did so much good for so many people, and—in the true spirit of giving—not mindlessly but mindfully. He could see when people were in need and he helped them without being asked, and generously, like he was giving to himself. I think then of the Quran, the Bible, or any message from God, which clearly says store your treasure in heaven, through kindness to other beings. When They 'roll up the heavens like a scroll of parchment' surely Din Anna's deeds will be written there, and given to his right hand. Though still grieving, this I believe.

The entire way of the world is thinking that we can have our way with the world, that if we have the right mindset or set of products or sheer wealth and power we can have control, and thus relief. But this is wholly illusory. It never works, as hard as people work at it. It's not just that wealth and power are illusory, but that the self that we try to 'create the best version' of is, in fact, illusory as well. The self is a collection of aggregates, a bunch of references to other states, to other people, to other times, a not very special relativity. Being selfish is literally nihilism. There's nothing there at the center, just a furious spinning. It's literally building castles out of sand, and calling ourselves philosopher kings. Every day brings waves of erosion, until it's all finally swept away.

Control, ie attachment, is actually the root cause of suffering. The illusion that we can sustain the illusion is what causes so much pain. As the Quran says, "there are indeed signs for people who use their reason," the rains, the plants, the destruction of every single city and person before us. The flowers rotting at the feet of the Buddha. Christ himself on the cross. Control is the mother of all illusions, and clinging is the very cause of loss.

You don't have to be a monk or experience the sublime to know this. You can have children or even pets, creatures that just don't care at all, the sages of obliviousness. In their unknowing they know more than the wisest of us all. Right now, for example, the cat is putting his paws on the keyboard while the dog explores a room, looking for trouble most certainly, which I will have to clean up. We think these creatures are dumb, but perhaps animals don't talk because there's nothing to say. Indeed, the core injunction of meditation is just shutting up. We prattle on and call it progress, until the hot air literally kills everyone.

We feel bad because we're not rich or famous, but just look at those people. They look miserable. Are they any happier than a man with a tin of biscuits and grandchildren? There's just a point of diminishing returns, and honestly it starts from the first moment of attachment. And yet in every connection there's a moment of detachment, where you think about somebody/something else. And this release from the self is where we seem to find the most meaning and indeed happiness. Nobody sits on their deathbed counting their money or newspaper clippings. They think about relationships.

And yet, in life, we're always putting those relationships off to do 'more important' stuff. As the Buddha said, "Viewing the non-essential as the essential and the essential as the non-essential they—nourished on false thinking—do not arrive at the essential." And so we all arrive at our final destination, firmly rooted in ignorance, confusing interruptions with the main program.

I think of this as I'm playing with dinosaur toys, or cleaning shit off the rug. No, actually I don't. I'm just thinking of it now. I'm as firmly engrossed in the illusion of control as anybody else, but every now and then some of the lesser philosophers of the world will interrupt to teach me something, though I'd rather be on my phone. This world cannot be controlled and, indeed, should not be controlled. That way lies grasping, and losing, and suffering, no matter what you hold. But if you let other things hold you, you can—even if just for an instant—be carried like a leaf on a stream, not in fear and trembling every moment, but just going.

7. Meetings About Massacres

Whatever they say in public, the 'Israelis' and Americans (same White Empire) are having meetings about massacres. They're having PowerPoints about poets. They're using cartography to mark cardiologists for execution, and wiping entire hospitals off the map entirely. They're keeping daily journals of all the journalists they kill, and having aides bring them lists of aid agencies to target. None of this is collateral. It's all pre-meditated and intentional. Beneath the pile of bodies is a pile of paperwork, and covering it all up are corrupt newspapers.

'Israel's' stated and executed policy is to just fucking kill everybody, directly and then through disease and starvation. As former National Security Council head Giora Eiland said and as the current Finance Minister seconded: "The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers. And no, this is not about cruelty for cruelty's sake, since we don't support the suffering of the other side as a goal but as a means." The cruelty is not collateral. It's intentional. If you only noticed because they killed some white aid workers (and one Palestinian), you're an asshole, but welcome.

Nothing should obfuscate that 'Israeli' policy is what's actually happening, not what the liars and their whitewashers are telling you. Some 'Israeli' publication ran an article about how 'Israel' is using AI to target militants and their families, which sounds dystopian in itself, but it's obfuscation. This implies that 'Israel' is targeting militants at all, and not hitting hospitals, civilians, aid workers, and journalists on purpose. As Norman Finkelstein says, "The nub of the problem is neither disciplinary nor technical. It's Israel's murder plan: to make Gaza unlivable and to force its people to decide—starve or leave." The plan is what's being executed, and what they say is the plan (freeing hostages) is just part of the plan (to lie about i). 'Israel' has executed more hostages than it's freed, and meanwhile have taken thousands more Palestinians hostage and killed them in the tens of thousands. If you just open your eyes and plug your ears it's obvious.

'Israel' is laser focused on killing the Palestinian people entirely, on making Gaza unlivable, as they've openly said. And they're doing it. And this all had to be planned before the people were executed. They had to have meetings to discuss where the water supplies, food, sewage treatments, and electricity were, and then they had to have more meetings to bomb them. They had to coordinate where aid was being dropped by the Americans, and then plan to bomb the people that came to get it. They had get coordinates of aid agencies from the Americans (wink wink) in order to precisely bomb them (nod nod).

Somewhere, people are sitting in air-conditioned conference rooms, drinking bottled water, pulling up spreadsheets of how many people they expect to kill of starvation and thirst. Then some politician is telling them to get those numbers up. Somewhere people are having Zoom calls where they discuss foreign aid workers coming in, and how this messes with the starvation plan, so kill them. Then someone else is sitting at a computer screen, sending a bomb through the logo, then following the wounded to another car, bombing them again, and then following up to triple-tap them. All while some bureaucrat is standing over their shoulder nodding. Good job. Let me update spreadsheet. This is all pre-meditated, and someone else gets cc'ed on the media plan to cover it up in newsprint. They're pissing on your legs and calling it rain and, shockingly, some people still lap it up as 'honest mistakes'.

They say once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, and thrice is pre-meditated. But what do you call 3,000? What do you call n+1, every single day, for six months of reigning death? That's a plan, executed ruthlessly. These are all executions. 'Israel' does not give a fuck, and America does not withhold anything. What can genocide grandpa say to their genocidal offspring? 'Israel' said Gaza was populated by 'human animals' and they'd 'reduce it to rubble' and they're 'acting accordingly'. And that's precisely what they're doing. They're planning, executing, and everything else is just excuses with expiration dates. 'Israel' has discovered that, like break-ups, the best way to get over one cycle of bad press is to do something even more horrible. One bombed hospital is a tragedy, but bombing every hospital becomes a statistic. It doesn't even get covered. The best cover-up way to cover up some bodies is more bodies. Somehow if the corpses are a mountain it becomes a molehill.

What gets me is all the white-collar workers this takes. From the 'Israeli' bureaucrats making lists of doctors and intellectuals to murder, to the soldiers pushing the buttons to obliterate them. From the paper-pushers marking out which homes to demolish, and the software-developer reservists going out and taking selfies while doing it. Then, on the American side, the people releasing the 2,000 pound bombs to drop on starving 20 pound children. Somebody has to sign all that paperwork, somebody has to load the bombs, and then maybe some celebrity comes and signs the bombs themselves. Then the PR flacks have to have meetings to coordinate their lies, and western 'journalists' have to craft sentences without subjects or objects to make all the active violence disappear in the passive voice. It's a massive coordination job, all this carnage.

The sheer amount of dry work that goes into wet work is staggering, and yet we've only seen one or two resignations. Thousands of people are participating in this genocide as their daily job, and they just go home and play with their kids and walk their dogs like it's nothing. 'Israel' as a country is completely deranged, but America is equally arranged around this. This is not a collective madness, it's a collective methodicalness. That's what's so diabolical. There are spreadsheets behind the shrouds, there are meetings about people we'll never meet again, there are hotspots marking the hospitals, there are addendums listing all the academics to be killed, and the locations of all the universities. People are having refreshments while they discuss starving other people to death, and choosing coffee or tea while unleashing killer drones to hunt those looking for sustenance. Then they're looking for the sugar while a father looks for food, and gets murdered by a drone and left to bleed out while somebody watches it all on a video feed.

This is all written down and then there are written plans about how to lie about it. And then people go out and do it. This is the bureaucracy of evil. This is 'Israel' and America. This is the White Empire, which hides in the background like it doesn't exist, while pushing entire populations out of existence entirely. There are no bad apples here, this is a bad apple cart, and the whole thing must be overthrown, wholesale. There is no redeeming this. The western governments, the western press, the very concept that the West should have anything to do with any part of the Earth, that has to be resisted and resisted violently.

Empire must be overthrown for this world to know any semblance of peace at all. They'll keep having meetings about massacres until we're all in the grave, and the fact is that every Palestinian they've killed or maimed is enough condemnation. It is as if they've killed the whole world, and they're doing it hundreds of times every day. The only salvation is that tens of thousands of martyrs are having their own meetings with Allah right now, on top of the millions the American have already sent there for decades.

While Allah moves as he wills, when he does move, he moves inexorably. As the Quran says, "Remember how those who bent on denying the truth plotted against you to imprison you or kill you or expel you: they schemed—but God also schemed. God is the best of schemers." Allah also said "They have an appointed time beyond which there will be no escape for them. We destroyed these communities when they went on doing wrong, and We appointed a time for their destruction." I don't know when the time for the destruction of 'Israel' and America is but, inshallah, it's coming. It can't come soon enough for me. This bloodlessness with which they wage such bloodshed is enraging.

8. Why I'm Fasting This Ramadan

I've been fasting for Ramadan, so 23 days now. What this means, practically, is that I don't take food or water from around 5 AM to 6:30, despite it being the hottest season in Sri Lanka. What this means, personally, is I have a better understanding of my Muslim friends, who I've seen doing this for years. What this means, spiritually, is that I pray to Allah 4-5 times a day (despite being a Buddhist) and I find it a moving experience (despite perhaps putting my soul in danger, since I've clearly been told now). I've found it a difficult but rewarding experience. These are my experiences, insomuch as I can communicate them at all.

Literally Why

My father, a pretty devout atheist, told me to read the Bible when I was young. You simply have to know the Bible to understand modern literature and the modern world. For this reason, I try to read as many foundational texts as I can, and the Quran is obviously foundational for much of the world.

Lately I've been feeling this big gap in my knowledge because Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah, etc, make references that just go over my head. And they're great references. They talk about 'weak as a spider's web' and 'it was not you who threw, but Allah who threw.' There's obviously a big and rich literary world out there that I'm just missing without the Quran. But this is only the most literal reason to experience Ramadan and, I think, the most superficial.

The Quran is not just a book, it's a holy book. One of the proofs of the Quran is the Quran itself. As the book repeatedly says, "do they claim, "He made it up!"? Tell them ˹O Prophet˺, "Produce one sûrah like it then, and seek help from whoever you can—other than Allah—if what you say is true!"

The Quran as revealed and recited by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is a work of magnificent poetry and power, and I'm reading it in translation, a pale imitation of the original Arabic. To me, the Quran is definitely divinely inspired, and I felt it from the beginning, in just the way They describe it. Allah—through his messenger—says,

"˹It is˺ Allah ˹Who˺ has sent down the best message—a Book of perfect consistency and repeated lessons—which causes the skin ˹and hearts˺ of those who fear their Lord to tremble, then their skin and hearts soften at the mention of ˹the mercy of˺ Allah"

and I have felt this myself.

When I first read the Quran—in Dubai, before it became a Shaytanic playground—I 'literally' felt my heart tremble. I felt, for lack of a better word, scared, though I think the better word would be godfearing. I could feel that whatever was in there was definitely real, and definitely powerful. I sincerely believe that the Quran is the word of Allah. As the book says, "Do you not see how Allah compares a good word to a good tree? Its root is firm and its branches reach the sky." That's how it feels to read the Quran.

And yet I never finished it.

I got out of Dubai (I was just stuck there on a layover) and had other things to read and do. That book is still on my bookshelf, gathering dust. A few years ago, however, I was walking down the street in Oxford and someone just handed me another Quran. I've been carrying that copy around and trying to get through it for months now. My daughter makes fun of me because she finished Fantastic Mr. Fox in a day and I've been carrying this smaller book around for like 15% of her entire lifetime. Ramadan was a good opportunity to just finish it (the Quran is divided up into 30 juz for this purpose), so I thought I'd take it. Again, however, that's the least of the reasons. The Quran is not a book it's a holy book, and there's much more to it.

Personally

To me, the proof of a religion is not in textual nitpicking but in the sort of person it produces. And I've seen Islam produce some really good people. When I was in university I was friends with an Iraqi (all I remember is Muhammad, so I'm never finding him again). Muhammad was not a student, I met him cause he was randomly Michael Jackson dancing at a party, and he liked going out to nightclubs. But he just danced and talked to people. He never drank, he never did drugs, he never slept with anyone or even dated. This was very incongruous for me because I was still in a culture where that was all the point. At 'freshers' week the university gave us all free-flowing beer and threw co-eds together like, get at it. Honestly, God knows what happened, it wasn't good and in an unconscious way I wasn't feeling it. I was painfully insecure at the time and Muhammad helped me get out of my shell without getting wasted, which I appreciated.

After university I was travelling around Sri Lanka a lot and I went with my friend Halik. Halik would frequently stop to pray, including literally on rocks in the ocean. I'd meditate while he was doing it but I was always curious as to what exactly he was doing. Halik was also a deeply ethical person and in a way that wasn't coincidental. He might have inclined that way naturally, but Islam was clearly how he structured his life. He really followed Islam. It made him who he was, and he was a good person.

As someone who grew up in America all you know about Islam is the same shallow lies repeated over and over again. That Muslims are terrorists, that they hate women, that they're backwards and savage. I honestly thought those things once, but meeting actual Muslims quickly disabused me. The people I saw were good, and Islam was a big, obvious reason for it. It literally structured their days and, during Ramadan, their entire month. Colombo is pretty evenly split between Sinhala (me), Tamil (my wife), and Muslim (a race here), and the latter is the one community I have the least experience 'being'. And I wanted that. I've worked with and known people who were fasting for years, and I was always curious. What was this experience, and why? So this year I called Halik and just tried it.

Practically

This is a roundabout way of getting to what seems to interest most people about Ramadan, which is the fasting. Fasting is really the means and not the meaning. It's putting God first and putting worldly desires literally aside, at least in my experience. And it's a long enough experience to be habit-forming.

Fasting is a discipline that I found makes me more disciplined in general. Regardless of how much I don't want to, I just get up at 4:45 because I have to. I have to get any water and food for the day in by then. But that's not the point. The point, really, is that I start my day with prayer, that's the real discipline.

Once I'm up I'm usually up, so sometimes I get my work done before anyone else is even awake. My golden hours for writing are in the morning, and this forces me to use them. At the same time, waking up early forces me to sleep early, otherwise I'm just wrecked. Now, I will note that many Muslims in Sri Lanka become nocturnal during Ramadan and seem to stay out later than ever, but I just can't do it. I end up being early to bed and early to rise, which, as the saying goes, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise by default. A lot of the spiritual injunctions of Islam are, in fact, just good practice and hygiene. With the ritual washing, for example, my hands and feet have never been cleaner. I just wash them at least four times a day, again by default.

The downsides, however, are that if I do anything (especially in this heat) it's very draining. By afternoon I usually need a nap, which I don't usually. Being tired, thirsty, and hungry can also make me (more) cranky with my family, even though the injunction is to be on your best behavior during Ramadan. I'm often not. Also, as my mother says, I'm not Muslim and I'm not from a Muslim family. Islam is a social religion and fasting alone is profoundly anti-social. I end up missing Easter lunch and can't keep sil on Poya, which are the religions my family actually follows. Ramadan is supposed to bring people together, but for me it's mostly isolating, except when someone invites me to something.

That isolation, however, is also good for meditation, albeit in the Muslim form. The Muslim prayers took me a while to understand, but now I can go through the motions without checking WikiHow. I dunno if it's the blood going to my head, but I feel quite moved when I bow and say subhaana rabbiyal a'alaa, and I mean it when I say rabbighfirli (forgive me). At the end of the prayers I say salaam to the angel on my right shoulder (counting my good deeds) and to the one on my left (counting my bad), and they're real to me during Ramadan. The discipline around basic functions makes the higher functions more disciplined by default, and I'm more aware of when I do wrong. And I simply do less of it.

Before Ramadan I would eat, drink alcohol, or take ayurvedic cannabis out of boredom more than else, plus the grief of just everything. But now I can't do any of those things, so I just... don't. Instead I go to prayer for relief and it's actually more relieving. It speaks to the pain rather than just numbing it. And that's quite a reset. Ramadan gives you a month when you commit to just trying, and it seems to work. A month is both short enough to actually do, and long enough to be habit-forming. To form good habits, with good people, and a good book. It's quite practical.

Spiritually

What I learned as a young man was that faith is a practice. I learned that through Buddhist meditation, which changed my life. I'm a bad Buddhist, but I'm a Buddhist. I still take refuge in the Triple Gem. Paradoxically and incongruously, however, I also believe in Allah, I also revere Jesus, and I also venerate the Hindu deities. These are all the gods of my island home and I feel at home with all of them. I understand that the first commandment of the monotheistic faiths is don't do this, but that's what I'm doing. I hope I'll be forgiven.

At these times, which sure feel like end times, I find that Islam really speaks to me. People say Islam is a religion of peace, but that's the white man's word. Islam is a religion of justice. The Quran constantly repeats the fact that those who believe and do good works will be rewarded, and those who spread corruption throughout the land and set up rivals to God will be punished. In these days when the corrupt and faithless are doing so much evil, when people worship money, I honestly find this comforting. Allah very clearly says that 'this world' is nothing and the hereafter is everything. The Quran says, "This worldly life is no more than play and amusement, but far better is the ˹eternal˺ Home of the Hereafter for those mindful ˹of Allah˺. Will you not then understand?" I don't know if I understand, but I really want to. This can't be all, because this is awful.

There's a strange pedantry in not believing life after death, but what do people do with all this smartness? So what? Someone who truly fears the hereafter behaves quite differently in the here and now, and that changes their soul irregardless. A truly godfearing person would help the poor and strive for justice and try and live a better, cleaner life, so nothing is lost. And potentially everything is gained, in ways we cannot fathom. I won't get into this because it's like describing the color red in words. It's just not possible. I remember asking Bhanthe Gunaratne about rebirth and he simply said he'd experienced it, but didn't ask me to believe or explain one way or another. To me, the afterlife is literally what it says on the tin. You can't understand it in this life, but you can fear it. The feeling they call godfearing. And I definitely fear God, and worry for my 'soul' above all things.

That's why I like Ramadan, because it devotes a whole month to God, and almost all of your waking hours. Ramadan is, for me, a reset from the demands of 'this world' and a remembrance of the demands of something higher. It's easy to forget as we go from meal to meal and distraction to distraction (sometimes the same thing) and it's good to have a structured way to remember, not through reading and knowing, but through doing and understanding.

I won't say that I 'get' Ramadan and I have, in fact, been reluctant to write this piece. Faith is a practice, it's an experience, and though it may use books, it cannot be contained in books at all. This was my experience as a Buddhist growing up, praying with Jews in Montreal, taking my kids to church in England, or praying with Muslims now. Some things can't be put into words at all. You have to just do them, and you can't necessarily bring that much back to communicate. That's been my experience of Ramadan. I don't know what to tell you. All I can say is that I've been told, quite clearly.

9. The Rules-Based Order Is Precisely The VIOLATION of International Law

During a UN mandated ceasefire, after a ruling from the International Court of Justice, and before the whole world, 'Israel' is doing the most evil shit imaginable. This week alone they have massacred another hospital, bombed another country's embassy in another country, and killed international aid workers delivering food. The comparison to Nazis is, at this point, moot. These are the Nazis of our generation and 'like the Israelis' will be the epithet of the future.

'Israel', of course, does not exist without the brutal benediction of the old colonial powers, now ruling from America. America is where, as that arch war criminal Churchill said, "the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old." This meant, in typical doublespeak, the continued subjugation of the world. The same imperialism proceeded from the same imperial bases, just under a different arrangement of red, white, and blue. Churchill stated the still dominant policy towards Palestine quite openly at the time. He said, "I do not apologize for the takeover of the region by the Jews from the Palestinians in the same way I don't apologize for the takeover of America by the whites from the Red Indians or the takeover of Australia from the blacks. It is natural for a superior race to dominate an inferior one." This is still America's policy now. It's one White Empire, after all.

Rule Britannia has become the 'Rules-Based Order' but it's the same thing. Rule. As Arnaud Bertrand and others have stated, the Rules-Based Order is precisely the violation of International Law. Nothing shows this more than the desecration of Palestine, under imperial violence most foul.

International Law

The West and western media keep saying that 'Israel has the right to self-defense' when no such right exists under international law. As UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said:

I will clarify what is self-defense under international law so that everyone can understand well. There's not such a thing that Israel could claim. In common language, self-defense might be understood as the right to protect oneself, which Israel clearly has. Israel has the sacrosanct right and duty to protect itself, its territory, its citizens, although it tends to confuse a lot its own territory with the territory that it's trying to annex under occupation, and this is illegal. However, Article 51 of the UN Charter that Israel has invoked is not just the right to protect itself; it's a legal term of art and means the right to wage a war, which Israel doesn't have. This is consolidated jurisprudence of the Supreme Judicial Organ of the United Nations. I understand that state practice might diverge (United States and Iraq) but the law remains the law, and this is what we should follow.

The right of self-defense can be invoked when a state is threatened by another state, which is not the case. Israel has not claimed that it has been threatened by another state; it's been threatened by an armed group, qualified the way you want, but it's an armed group within the occupied territory. Frankly, even saying the war between Gaza and Israel is wrong because Gaza is not a standalone entity; it's part of the occupied territory. So in particular, Israel cannot claim the right of self-defense against a threat that emanates from the territory it occupies, from a territory that is kept under belligerent occupation. This not only exists in the jurisprudence of the ICJ but also has been said in the case of the occupied Palestinian territory.

Under International Law, an occupying power has no right to self-defense and occupied people have every right to resistance, including armed. This is well established by UN General Assembly resolutions 3314 and 37/43, the latter specifically mentioning Palestine. This is going to get long, but I'll reproduce the relevant sections here. It's worth understanding in full, because the western media has just kept repeating lies so much they become accepted as truth (re: Goebbels).

3314

Despite 'Israel' and America violently suppressing the creation of a Palestinian state for generations, it is nonetheless covered by resolution 3314 by virtue of Article 1—"the term "State": (a) Is used without prejudice to questions of recognition."

Despite 'Israel' claiming it has a God-given right to occupy Palestine, under international law (and honestly many Jewish readings) it has none. It was just put there as a fait accompli by colonial powers who A) didn't want to take Jews themselves and B) saw a ripe chance to divide and conquer the Middle East. 'Israel' has been trying to 'accompli' the 'fait' ever since, the 'fait' being total genocide and ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinians. This has been proceeding slowly for nearly a hundred years and has just reached 100° now.

'Israel's' acts are all clear aggression. 'Israel's' military occupation (3a), constant bombardment (3b), blockade (3c), military attacks (3d), and settler violence (3g) are all clear aggressions under international law. Under 3f, corrupted regimes like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Cyprus are also liable for allowing use of their bases and airspace. Read for yourself, and weep at how toothless this all is:

In contrast, the Palestinian Resistance including Hamas (which is just an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement) has every right to self-defense, including armed. The resolution is quite clear on this in Article 7, which I will reproduce in full.

Nothing in this Definition, and in particular article 3, could in any way prejudice the right to self-determination, freedom and independence, as derived from the Charter, of peoples forcibly deprived of that right and referred to in the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, particularly peoples under colonial and racist régimes or other forms of alien domination; nor the right of these peoples to struggle to that end and to seek and receive support, in accordance with the principles of the Charter and in conformity with the above-mentioned Declaration.

37/43

If that isn't clear enough for you, UN Resolution 37/43 connects this the right of self-defense explicitly to the Palestinian cause. In 1982 they said:

Considering that the denial of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, sovereignty, independence and return to Palestine and the repeated acts of aggression by Israel against the peoples of the region constitute a serious threat to international peace and security,

Strongly condemns the expansionist activities of Israel in the Middle East and the continual bombing of Palestinian civilians, which constitute a serious obstacle to the realization of the self-determination and independence of the Palestinian people;

Urges all States, competent organizations of the United Nations system, specialized agencies and other international organizations to extend their support to the Palestinian people through its sole and legitimate representative, the Palestine Liberation Organization, in its struggle to regain its right to self-determination and independence in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations;

Demands the immediate and unconditional release of all persons detained or imprisoned as a result of their struggle for self-determination and independence, full respect for their fundamental individual rights and the observance of article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, under which no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment;

In 2024, Hamas has taken over the duty of resistance from the corrupted Palestinian Authority. Rather than be kapos of the concentration camp, they rebelled and broke out of it. That's what October 7th was. As Hamas stated in the document Our Narrative: Operation Al-Aqsa Flood:

Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 targeted the Israeli military sites, and sought to arrest the enemy's soldiers to pressure on the Israeli authorities to release the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails through a prisoners exchange deal. Therefore, the operation focused on destroying the Israeli army's Gaza Division, the Israeli military sites stationed near the Israeli settlements around Gaza.

It is, in fact, the duty of all states and international organizations to support the Palestinian Resistance, a call which only Yemen and Iran (as state actors) have truly answered. As for any violations of human rights or international law, Hamas has called for and supports international investigations, while 'Israel' (quite violently) does not. 'Israel' has called the ICJ a tool of Hamas and is brazenly torturing, abducting, and killing UN workers.

2024

If this still isn't clear enough for you, the ICJ gave a clear provisional ruling on January 26th, 2024, telling 'Israel' to stop killing, harming, and generally destroying the Palestinian people. That ruling (reaffirmed on the 28th March) said:

(1) The State of Israel shall, in accordance with its obligations under the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular:

(a) killing members of the group;
(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and
(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(2) The State of Israel shall ensure with immediate effect that its military does not commit any acts described in point 1 above;

(3) The State of Israel shall take all measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip;

(4) The State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip;

None of this stuff has, obviously, happened. 'Israel' responded to this ruling by verbally attacking the ICJ and continuing to physically assault the Palestinian people, inflicting flour massacres, hospital destructions, and countless murders, abductions, tortures, and rapes, over and over and over. They are continuing to starve Palestinians to death and attack aid workers. It's not that they're making a mockery of international law. They're literally massacring it.

If this still (still?!) isn't enough, now the UN Security Council has passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire during Ramadan, and even the Great Satan America abstained and let it pass. 'Israel,' however, is just wiping its ass with this, like they do with every other piece of international law. The Americans have tried to say that this resolution is non-binding, which is an attack on the entire legitimacy of the Security Council and international law itself. Its resolutions are, by definition, binding, unless America is openly redefining international law, which it, of course, is. Quite openly now. This is the 'Rules-Based Order.' Fuck the rules, WE rule, if I may sum it up myself.

The Rules-Based Order

This section is much shorter because there's nothing to quote from. There are no written rules to the Rules-Based Order, there is no body of jurisprudence (however flawed) or even agreed upon documentation. There is no 'there' there. They're literally making it up as they go along. The only rule is they rule, it's basically this Simpson's meme as a system of global governance:

For example, the United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court (different from the ICJ) and has even targeted and sanctioned individual judges. In fact, they have a law on the books to invade The Hague if any of its war criminals are ever called up. That's how much they hold any written law that dares bind them in contempt. America's 'Hague Invasion Act' states:

The President is authorized to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any person described in subsection (b) who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.

Then to publicly show their determination to get away with war crimes, the United States has arrested an Australian national (Julian Assange) in its vassal state of the United Kingdom, for no real crime in particular, certainly not one that extends its tentacles across other nominally independent countries. His 'crime' was exposing the US murder of journalists in Iraq, among numerous other war crimes committed by America, but crooks are prosecuting him. They're just showing that they can reach out anywhere in their Empire and capture (or kill) anybody they want. And if anybody tries to bring them to justice, they'll intimidate the judges or just invade the courts. This is the Rules-Based Order. No rules apply to them, and whatever rules apply to everybody else.

The Rules-Based Order includes killing whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and then killing or kidnapping the journalists who expose it. It includes abducting, torturing, and imprisoning people forever without charges, as in Guantánamo Bay, which is still happening! It includes besieging whoever they want and making sure your great-grandchildren don't get medicine if you defy them. That's the rules and if you don't like it they'll fucking kill you. Pretty simple, really.

Above all, it involves them ruling above all and, like a good mafia boss, never writing shit down. They're literally just doing whatever they want and calling it 'Rules-Based' as a marketing tagline, like Democracy™ and Freedom©. The result is a violently disordered world which they are the prime cause of, not the solution. America is only the 'world police' in that they kill and steal more than the criminals do, just like the American police at home. They're really just world war criminals, operating under mafia law, with the UK, Germany, 'Israel', etc as capo regimes.

The 'Rules-Based Order' is really just a continuation of Rule Britannia, which is why I call the whole ruling phenomenon one White Empire. For those under the boots, who cares about the color of the socks? Union Jack or Star Spangled Banner, it's the same jackbooted thugs. Instead of the British motto Dieu et mon droit (God and my right), we get the American fuck you, pay me. Same difference. It's just another bunch of Nazis that won.

'Israel' makes a massacre of international law because that's what America has already done. Who needs jurisprudence when you have the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, as precedents? Not to mention Vietnam, Korea, and all the America war crimes in World War II (firebombing, dropping nukes on civilian populations) which only weren't prosecuted because they won. The American war policy during and since World War II was to go force light and massacre heavy. Despite never winning a war this way (the Soviets won WWII), they keep doing it because it's profitable. Hence the motto, fuck you, pay me, as discussed. America has killed millions of Muslims and displaced tens of millions in its terror wars, is it any surprise that 'Israel' is doing the same? They've got the franchise rights to genocide, the license to run their own (more immediately) murderous McDonald's.

'Israel' is not the master of America, that lets the White Empire off the hook that they, themselves, are dangling Jewish people on like a worm. 'Israel' is just a captive Jewish population that America themselves didn't want and made into a conscript army near the gas station, given the colonial right to violence against other Semitic peoples, to serve Empire's interests of divide and conquer. This is the one rule of Whiteness. You can come up, as long as you're always kicking down. Rather than getting any land or reparations from the people that actually hurt them, Zionists made a deal with the White Devils and it's ending in ruin, as deals with devils inevitably must. 'Israel' is winning the genocide and losing the war. They are killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, but their genocidal state is not long for this world, inshallah.

As I've discussed, 'Israel' is collapsing, the White Empire is collapsing, and the planet on top of it all. It's just a race to see what gets them first, though that is poor recompense for the brave, innocent souls being murdered and starved to death right now. May their faces be bright on the Day of Judgement, because no court of man can save them. The Rules-Based Order is not just the defiance of man-made law, it's the defiance of all morality and gods.

All of this discussion of international law is, of course, an academic exercise when we see fresh massacres every day. I remember a time when bombing a hospital was a news item and matter of debate, but now it's just regular. I remember the first flour massacre and people have stopped counting now. I remember when children held a press conference in the Al-Shifa Hospital to ask the Empire to stop killing them, and now the entire hospital has been destroyed and children executed in front of their families. That is what we've come to. International law never existed and now even the ghost has been murdered.

As the homicidal philosopher Anton Chigurh said, "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?" The rule is clearly that White Empire can kill and steal from whomever it wants, and that rules are just for people not in its mafia. This was always the 'Rules-Based Order', and in 'Israel' we can just see it clearly and immediately. The rule is colonial violence and apartheid on the regular, and absolute genocidal fury in the face of any resistance. Islamic or otherwise. We are all, ultimately, Palestinian under these 'rules'. It's just a timing difference.

As Gustavo Petro—the for now uncouped—President of Colombia said, "The European Union, the United Kingdom and above all the United States—they all support dropping bombs on people because they want to teach a lesson to the entirety of humanity. They are telling us: look at our military power. What happens to Palestine can happen to any of you if you dare to make changes without our permission." That is the rule, that above all is the rule. They get to do what they want, and if you don't like it, fuck you.

At this point—at this fearfully unending point—many things have been revealed as lies and one thing has revealed as true. The Western 'rules-based order' is precisely the violation of international law. Don't look at what they say, look at what they do. That's the rules and if you don't like it, they'll fucking kill you, they'll kill the doctors trying to save you, they'll kill the journalists documenting it, and they'll kill your children too. They'll do this in plain sight because they want the world to see. There's only one rule in the Rules-Based Order. Them's the rules.

10. Indefensible Democracy

Ukraine is supposed to be a battle for democracy, but what are they fighting for? Ukraine has suspended elections, banned opposition parties, and is run (into the ground) by foreign arms dealers. There's no visible democracy, it's all just mercenary marketing. Those foreigners—like the British—are supposed to be lecturers in democracy, but they themselves have an unelected head of state, unelected Prime Minister, and unelected Foreign Minister. And don't get me started on the Americans.

The country that actually runs the United Kingdom (into the ground) is re-running its last election, while the incumbent tries to bury his opponent with lawsuits and keep third-parties off the ballot. And it's not like the opponent is any better, he physically attacked their Parliament when he didn't like the last election results. I'll ask again because it bears repeating. When these degenerates talk about democracy, WTF are they talking about? It's really just a marketing tagline on rank oligarchy. They're just trying to sell you another cancerous product to make money.

America, the supposed city on a hill, was repossessed by the banks long ago. Today an unelected cartel in the Federal Reserve runs economic policy and the military industrial complex runs foreign policy. Corporations cannibalizing people at home and abroad, and calling it Freedom©. Meanwhile the ancestral home of White Empire, now a mere collection of vassals, is no better, they just have more airs about it. The European Union is literally a coal and steel cartel morphed into a bunch of bureaucrats with a shared Napoleon complex and no sense of even self-preservation.

The EU is merrily destroying its own energy and industry because America told them to while their population goes fascist again, as is the natural European inclination. The white supremacists gun buyer's club called NATO has merely continued the Nazi priority of fighting communists, even after communism in the USSR ended. They literally appointed literal Nazis named Adolf (Heusinger) to lead them and are now supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine. NATO kept kicking a dead horse so much that it finally woke up and kicked them back, in the teeth.

The most egregious example of 'democratic' evil is, of course, the 'Only Democracy In The Middle East,' 'Israel'. This 'country' follows the classic American model of genociding or imprisoning the population you don't like and calling it Freedom©. Democracy, in any form, is just a game, and the most important rule is who gets to play. 'Israel' violently concentrated the majority population off the board into a few squares, and is now exterminating them in broad daylight. And western populations are supposed to support this because it's just a democracy 'defending itself'. WTF are they going to say, really, these colonial cousins came up the same way.

You can see clearly here that the 'rules-based-order' is precisely the rejection of international law. International law clearly says that 'Israel', as an occupying power has no right to self-defense, while the Palestinian Resistance has every. But that's the opposite of what you see on western TV screens, which spread the same lies about coloreds raping white women used to justify their own lynchings. But people aren't buying this shit anymore. Enough people can see 'Israel' murdering men, women, and children every single day, and the 'free' press can't be banned and shadowbanned enough to hide all the bleeding. 'Israel' is the most mask-off moment for Democracy™ and it's revealed as a serial killer, marketed like so much breakfast cereal.

Democracy™ is really a process of dividing and conquering nations into a few pathetic parties for the people and one big orgy for capital. It's the Luxottica model of governance, offering many different brands (Ray-Ban, Oakley, Chanel), different shops within the same mall (LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision), all flowing into the same pockets. People get distracted into battles about trans people when the problem is transnational corporations. Every country, every battle has nothing to do with actual democracy. If voting changed anything they wouldn't let you do it. It's all just marketing. To understand any of these places don't follow the politics, which is just a reality TV show for ugly people. Just follow the money.

The one thing Democracy™ ensures is an interoperable set of weak states with strong, globalized capital. Between these states capital (ie, 'investment') can move freely, while labor (ie, humans) cannot. Goods can go wherever, while 'bads' (ie, pollution) are nobody's responsibility. As Tony Soprano said, "this thing is a pyramid, from time immemorial. Shit runs downhill, money goes up. It's that simple." He was, of course, describing the mafia, which is the simplest way of understanding Democracy™. It's just a carnivorous cartel, given power over the planet, the dead feeding on the living.

Any state that threatens this business model must be demonized, demonetized (sanctioned), and destroyed, ideally. It must be brought into the fold where capital controls the state and not where states control capital, violently if needs be. Hell, violently, even if it doesn't need to be. They make a killing by killing. The military industrial complex isn't that complicated, it's actually simple. Hence the unending attacks on the USSR, the current attacks on communist China, and the branding of any different political model as tyranny, which is actually an apt description. Ancient Greek tyrants were historically just strong leaders who overthrew oligarchies and freed debt slaves. The word has only become a pejorative now that oligarchs run the world, and certainly don't want that happening again. 'Debt slavery till total collapse!' is their motto, as they build luxury bunkers for themselves while peddling bombs to everyone else.

These human oligarchs are, of course, just rats on a sinking ship, the same ship that began enslaving us and stripping the land centuries ago. Ever since European greed was incarnated as incorporations, ever since the 'rights' to the South Seas and 'East Indies' were sold like so many NFTs, ever since then oligarchy ceased to be a human proposition and was, instead, the inexorable rise of the machines. These cyborgs were made of men and paper and renewable energy at first, and thus proceeded invisibly, but now the destruction is obvious enough for anyone to see. Malevolent AI ruling the world isn't science fiction. It's history.

Democracy™ is just the latest marketing campaign unleashed by sentient corporations to sell us on a worse and worse deal. It's all advertising by a cyborg committee that doesn't even understand what they're saying but doesn't care as long as it delivers profits. The 'civilizing' mission became the 'democratizing' mission, but it's the same colonialism. Democracy™ was just a Trojan Horse left by colonizers so they could keep taking our stuff and couping us whenever we get uppity. Behold the Democracy™ in my country, Sri Lanka, which has a completely unelected President doing whatever the IMF tells him, including throwing masses of children into malnutrition. Or Democracy™ in Peru or Pakistan, which includes couping and jailing the elected leaders and replacing them with despised despots. It's all lies to justify looting, as it always has been.

Late-stage Democracy™ is like late stage capitalist advertising itself, where they try to sell you more gas-guzzling jeeps using the very scenery the jeeps are destroying. It inhabits that same parallel universe, where cars cruise through cityscapes without traffic and plow through nature without consequences. It's all just the fever dreams of corporations dying of consumption and taking the whole planet with them. It's all just marketing. 'Free' marketing, itself an absurd tagline around the idea of making everything cost money and eventually disappear.

This shit is increasingly indefensible and is, instead, violently offensive. Thus you get America attacking places like China, where people actually like their government. In a western survey of over 50,000 people globally, "The countries considered most democratic by their citizens are China*, Vietnam, and Taiwan." 'They put the asterisk on China because "*In some countries surveyed the government plays an active role in shaping public opinion," as if Americans aren't the most actively propagandized people on Earth.' (via me). All that's left to counter the truth is delusions to defend the indefensible, and violent tantrums against anyone that dares different. Westerners hate their own governments, but they still believe the lie that this is the best they can get, because other places are worse. This is the big lie they've been told for decades, but it's getting increasingly indefensible. Because just look.

These corporate compradors have tried to make a 'democratic' example of Ukraine, and Ukraine is completely ruined (by them). Western countries supported a coup of Ukraine's elected government in 2014, supported war and oppression against Russian speakers there for years, pushed military matériel right up to Russia's borders, and then acted like Russia's attack came out of nowhere. To their credulous population this was easily sold, but now the lies have reached their expiry date.

Western populations were told rally around the defense of democracy, but what has that meant, in reality? Ukraine has banned opposition parties, shut down media outlets, and stopped elections entirely. Now they have one President, one TV station, and have to violently conscript men off the streets to fight America's war with Russia. While American politicians openly crow about degrading Russia without sacrificing a single American soldier, and with most of the money going back to America. With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Meanwhile 'Israel' is making a farce of the whole democratic project without even pretending. 'Israel' shows the true face of liberal democracy, which is really just genocidal gentrification. 'Israel' and Ukraine have been marketed as 'places like us', with Netflix and Freedom™, which is the idea of a shared culture via shared commodity fetishes. But these countries now show the true cost of being 'places like us', the necessary flip side of Democracy™, which is blithely killing anyone that isn't citizens and even killing citizens themselves if it's profitable.

Again and again in this turgid century, Democracy™ is revealed as mere marketing around a product that causes planetary cancer and kills children. It's revealed as just another toxic, cancerous product getting shoved down our throats to make a line go up in some corporate metabolism. This is Democracy™ and it's completely indefensible. Indeed, it's completely offensive. Just look at all the killing in its name. This is no way of life. It's just lying and dying. Democracy™, RIP, we hardly knew ye.