Exclusive War with Iran starting this week (4 Viewers)

[Rastapopoulos]

 

[Rastapopoulos]

 

[Sheldon Shape]

 

[2Fluffy4U]

Iran related or Israel-Hamas related? Isn't there a thread for war in Gaza? Move it there.. be happy to discuss.

 

[2Fluffy4U]

Since it is okay to post none related tweets.. heres a few for sheldon..

 

[Phatguysrule]

Since it is okay to post none related tweets.. heres a few for sheldon..

Having a tiny area like this have so much influence is unfortunately possible because we allow the wealthy to have so much power.

Notice the relative wealth disparity of the surrounding areas on your map.

Notice the wealth disparity in the US.

This is what happens when you consolidate power that should belong to the people (when you allow billionaires and monopoly corporations).

 

[2Fluffy4U]

Having a tiny area like this have so much influence is unfortunately possible because we allow the wealthy to have so much power.

Notice the relative wealth disparity of the surrounding areas on your map.

Notice the wealth disparity in the US.

This is what happens when you consolidate power that should belong to the people (when you allow billionaires and monopoly corporations).

You're conflating completely different things.

The Vatican has 800 people and influences 1.3 billion Catholics. Singapore is a tiny city-state with enormous strategic influence in Asia. Qatar punches way above its weight via energy resources. Switzerland is one of the most diplomatically influential countries on earth relative to its size. Are all of these explained by shadowy wealth consolidation too? Of course not, small nations can have outsized influence for historical, geographic, and strategic reasons that have nothing to do with billionaires.

Also, the "belong to the people" framing doesn't even apply here. That's a socialist economic argument about wealth distribution within a society, it has nothing to do with geopolitical influence between nations. And if wealth concentration is your actual concern, look at the surrounding region: absolute monarchies with zero democratic accountability and some of the most extreme wealth disparities on the planet. By your own logic, the map should make you more sympathetic to Israel, not less.

And the "colonizer" tag Sheldon et al. think israel is - It doesn't survive contact with a basic map or a history book. Colonizing means a large power expanding into and extracting from foreign territory. Israel is a country the size of New Jersey, with internationally recognized borders established in 1948, for a people with a continuous historical connection to that land. It didn't expand from some empire — it was immediately attacked by its neighbors who refused to accept its existence. That pattern hasn't changed: "from the river to the sea" isn't a call for coexistence, it's a call for elimination of the same country that people love to call a colonizer. You can't simultaneously claim a people have no right to their land and then act surprised when they fight for it.

You're applying a domestic class-warfare template to a completely different situation IMO.
This has nothing to do with economic ruling (Socialism, Capitalism). It has everything to do with nationalism.

 

[Phatguysrule]

You're conflating completely different things.

The Vatican has 800 people and influences 1.3 billion Catholics. Singapore is a tiny city-state with enormous strategic influence in Asia. Qatar punches way above its weight via energy resources. Switzerland is one of the most diplomatically influential countries on earth relative to its size. Are all of these explained by shadowy wealth consolidation too? Of course not, small nations can have outsized influence for historical, geographic, and strategic reasons that have nothing to do with billionaires.

Also, the "belong to the people" framing doesn't even apply here. That's a socialist economic argument about wealth distribution within a society, it has nothing to do with geopolitical influence between nations. And if wealth concentration is your actual concern, look at the surrounding region: absolute monarchies with zero democratic accountability and some of the most extreme wealth disparities on the planet. By your own logic, the map should make you more sympathetic to Israel, not less.

And the "colonizer" tag Sheldon et al. think israel is - It doesn't survive contact with a basic map or a history book. Colonizing means a large power expanding into and extracting from foreign territory. Israel is a country the size of New Jersey, with internationally recognized borders established in 1948, for a people with a continuous historical connection to that land. It didn't expand from some empire — it was immediately attacked by its neighbors who refused to accept its existence. That pattern hasn't changed: "from the river to the sea" isn't a call for coexistence, it's a call for elimination of the same country that people love to call a colonizer. You can't simultaneously claim a people have no right to their land and then act surprised when they fight for it.

You're applying a domestic class-warfare template to a completely different situation IMO.
This has nothing to do with economic ruling (Socialism, Capitalism). It has everything to do with nationalism.

I didn't say it was the only way. But that is the reason Israel has so much influence. That is the largest problem here in the US.

Also, nothing I said had anything to do with socialism.

But yes, many of your examples are largely due to wealth disparity as well.

Nationalism is a tool of the wealthy to control the less wealthy.

 

[2Fluffy4U]

I didn't say it was the only way. But that is the reason Israel has so much influence. That is the largest problem here in the US.

Also, nothing I said had anything to do with socialism.

But yes, many of your examples are largely due to wealth disparity as well.

Nationalism is a tool of the wealthy to control the less wealthy.

My following comment is assisted via claude AI:

"Nationalism is a tool of the wealthy to control the less wealthy." That's a very specific ideological claim, and it reveals a framework of thinking that's shaped almost entirely I believe by the American academic left, not by actual world history.

Let's look at what nationalism actually is and where it came from. Modern nationalism emerged in the late 18th and 19th centuries as ordinary people — peasants, workers, the poor — began identifying with a shared language, culture, and history, and demanding self-governance instead of being ruled by distant empires and kings. It was the engine behind the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the unification of Germany and Italy, the independence movements across Latin America, Africa, and Asia in the 20th century. Gandhi's movement was nationalism. Nelson Mandela's ANC was nationalism. The Vietnamese resistance to both French and American occupation was nationalism. Were all of these just wealthy elites manipulating the poor? Of course not — in most cases nationalism was the language of the powerless pushing back against empire.

Your framing IMO is a very particular post-Vietnam, post-Iraq American lens — shaped by the very real and valid criticism of how US politicians used patriotism to sell unjust wars. That criticism is legitimate in its specific context. But universalizing it into "all nationalism everywhere is elite manipulation" is an enormous and ahistorical leap.