Gramsci wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 6:19 am

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2026 6:38 pm
A whole lot of shit going on, all of it bad, but the Palestine correlation is still crazy talk.

Fair. I just get frustrated at the focus on Israeli government behaviour while other conflicts and acts of violence oppression get roundly ignored especially on the left. As someone pointed out playing with body counts is kind of dumb.

I do take umbrage in the idea casualty numbers of Iranian protesters are all “Western propaganda”, but Hamas numbers on Palestinians should be taken as accurate. Either way it’s a lot of dead people that didn’t need to be.

You’re still making false equivocations. If the United States wanted to yoink the leash on Israel it could have happened yesterday. There is no interest in doing so from any recent administration and we have horror after horror to show for it. Every American should be interested in what their government is doing abroad, but there are many cases of people losing their jobs and put on lists for it for even speaking out about it. There is a direct line to American military spending and the lack of money for basic social safety nets and health care.

The Iran protests vary on the amount dead from some thousands to the low tens of thousands, and it’s pretty clear that there was paramilitary fighting involved. You can’t try to spin it like a No Kings protest was mowed down in the street because that’s not what happened. Fighting cops (not the Revolutionary Guard or paramilitary units) in Iran has a different legal status than trying to pull shit like that in the United States. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a violent military clamp down, doesn’t mean that legitimate protests don’t flare up at the same time, doesn’t mean that innocent people didn’t die. They still aren’t the same but you have to understand what is actually happening rather than to act like a genocide is happening in Iran at the same time.

Palestine’s death count doesn’t even count the missing buried under the rubble and I’m sure you’ve seen what that place looks like now.

Iran is not the same, and while both are happening because of American and Israeli aggression you are backing yourself into a corner by continuing with the comparison. Again, you don’t even have to juat read up on things happening now - look up Guard, NYT, whatever articles that come out prior to any regime change operation and then what happened to the country afterwards. You can’t read any of this uncritically without being totally misinformed, and yet you double and triple down on doing so.

hbiden@onlyfans.com wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 3:13 am

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 2:12 am Linking to accounts based out of Europe doesn’t hide how weird those slop accounts are.

The French account had to repost that video with their faces blurred because the Persian account failed to take that precaution. It doesn’t make it slop. That’s just called going viral.

The other Instagram video you shared before that was some Persian guy at a protest in Wales (?!) being questioned by a guy who’s usual beat is literally interviewing homeless drug addicts and reviewing food carts. I’m guessing your ‘for you’ page is a bunch of Iranian diaspora propaganda pushed by Instagram, just like mine was after I checked your links.

Go to your Instagram profile, tap the menu (three lines) > Settings and privacy > Content preferences > Reset suggested content.

I can’t imagine what kind of crazed stuff you are getting sucked into but everything makes a lot more sense now.

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2026 6:41 pm

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2026 10:51 am

Gramsci wrote: Also, how is this “shit I talk about Muslims”? Are we doing that tankie thing where Russia and Iran are actually really just misunderstood good guys, and their standing up to the US and NATO means they’re “leftist”? Iran is a right wing capitalist theocratic dictatorship. I’m perfectly happy as a leftist to say fuck everything about that government.

Nothing about what I said was anti Muslim. But I am anti clerical to the bone and will never support any form of theocracy. Those who been here long enough will remember long arguments between members about the borderline theocracy that crept in during the Bush terms. No Muslims needed....

See initial comment about holding more than one idea at once. The same way I think Israel did war crimes but Hamas can all be dropped from helicopters into the Med.

Pretty much all of this. Doesn't mean anyone should bomb them, w/ or w/o congressional authorization, but exactly.

Totally possibly to loathe the Iranian government (especially when you have not-remotely-Shahs-of-Sunset-type Persian friends who survived it while having plenty of family still over there) but also think the US "solution" (b/c of Israeli coercion) is way the fuck out of line and will lead to more problems. That's just analysis, as opposed to simplistically turning world events into them-vs-us football games.

It's ironic but unsurprising that some of the loudest voices about this pointless bullshit mess in Iran (which I am also fully against, obviously) make all sorts of excuses for Russia's actions in Ukraine or wholly ignore stuff like the anti-Muslim Uighur genocide (sorry, "re-education") in China.

Half of me thinks that Russia's Ukraine incursion helped open the floodgates for countries like Israel and the US to say, "wait, we can do this again, now?"

Gross world powers gonna act like gross world powers.

Gramsci was responding to something I directly challenged him on but you are just typing I guess? Ukraine what?

Nothing there directed towards you, specifically.

Basically just noting that I well understand the point that Gramsci is trying to make.

The tankie aspect of it all is very much real. And certain hunks of the left seem to pick and choose the genocides that best suit them. Kinda like, "The poor Palestinians, ugh, but China's camps for the Uighurs, aw, forget it, not really convenient to my argument and way too complicated. Ignore." Similar logic applies to their views of Eastern Europe. Wasn't saying any of this applied to you specifically, but it's definitely a thing.

In terms of something a little more relevant, diaspora culture, even when it's politically horrible, has as much right to an opinion as anyone. If anything, it has more of a right to weigh in on these things than a bunch of (usually) white male leftists.

Such people tend to have family who actually still live in these countries and also have their ears more closely to the ground there than we do. As we've seen w/ first-person relatives writing or taking vids in Palestine and Gaza, politically biased news sites and viral social media are not a great stand-in for say, cousins who are trying to survive there.

I try to keep that in mind even when I don't agree. I hate Trump's foreign policy more than most people but broadly equating most diaspora Venezuelans w/rich conservatives or Persian-Americans as being Shahs of Sunset types seems pretty simplistic, not to mention borderline racist. I had a Persian roommate during the Iraq war, and his take on things there and in Iran was, surprisingly, pretty fucking nuanced. He went back every year and at one point, his mother even moved back there from Michigan, feeling soured on the USA. (She promptly returned after a few months, saying she'd made a terrible mistake.)

A Venezuelan bartender, who is far from a Trumper and whose entire family still resides over there, recently noted to me how arrogant and well, colonialist it is that all these Americans at the bar seem to view the Venezuelans (in Venezuela, no less) cheering Maduro's removal (which I oppose, but he does not) as if they're stupid enough to think that Trump or America has their best interests in mind. Apparently, his parents and their neighbors very much do not think that. It's just more of a two-things-at-once scenario again. That said, I kept reminding him how lousy and cynical the US track record (Iraq, etc.) w/such things has been, to which he replies he's well aware of that but willing to roll the dice and wonders what right I have to suddenly invest myself in his country's plight more than he does. Shit is extremely complicated, to say the least. Imperialism takes many forms.

Your lyrical diarrhea is breathtaking. This is the most engagement I can allow myself on it. Just paragraphs and paragraphs of bullshit just for the sake of a word count.

Lu Zwei wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 2:50 am

hbiden@onlyfans.com wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 12:55 am None of us are experts. It’s not about us or how much we hate Pete & Bibi. It’s about the people inside Iran.

Yeah, my man. The Serbians really love what you've done with the place in the late 90s. Really liberating stuff!

That was more of a NATO initiative than a purely American one. And nobody was trying to "liberate" Serbia. Rather blatantly, NATO was trying to pummel the Serbs into submission over Kosovo.

In Kosovo, as in Albania, you still, weirdly enough, have streets named after Bush and Clinton. And, Serbian enclaves aside, people still buy you drinks simply for being American.

At the same time, Belgrade still attracts Albanian migrant workers and immigrants while romanticizing Russia and taking tons of US-allied Gulf State money for massive development projects on its riverbanks.

What a world...

Lu Zwei wrote: Your lyrical diarrhea is breathtaking. This is the most engagement I can allow myself on it. Just paragraphs and paragraphs of bullshit just for the sake of a word count.

Yeah, illiteracy is a bitch.

We need to call the mods on you again?

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 12:35 pm That was more of a NATO initiative than a purely American one. And nobody was trying to "liberate" Serbia. Rather blatantly, NATO was trying to pummel the Serbs into submission over Kosovo.

In Kosovo, as in Albania, you still, weirdly enough, have streets named after Bush and Clinton. And, Serbian enclaves aside, people still buy you drinks simply for being American.

At the same time, Belgrade still attracts Albanian migrant workers and immigrants while romanticizing Russia and taking tons of US-allied Gulf State money for massive development projects on its riverbanks.

What a world...

My good fellow Eastern Dude, no one mentioned Kosovo and Albania, so i have no idea why did you need to insert those into the equation. I was talking about interventionist tactics, but you already know that. Your word count is there to just muddy to waters of sincere discussion.

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 12:35 pm
Yeah, illiteracy is a bitch.

I have no problems understanding your BS here. I'm good.

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 12:35 pm We need to call the mods on you again?

You can call whoever you want, but good conscience discussion is just the only thing you'll never call on in your life. Unlike yourself, whitewashing is not my tactic and I try to express myself in an honest and concise manner. You're again trying to poke holes in my English expression. Until I see you writing in my language to compare our lyrical dicks, you can just fuck the fuck off with that rhetoric.

Lu Zwei wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 12:45 pm

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 12:35 pm That was more of a NATO initiative than a purely American one. And nobody was trying to "liberate" Serbia. Rather blatantly, NATO was trying to pummel the Serbs into submission over Kosovo.

In Kosovo, as in Albania, you still, weirdly enough, have streets named after Bush and Clinton. And, Serbian enclaves aside, people still buy you drinks simply for being American.

At the same time, Belgrade still attracts Albanian migrant workers and immigrants while romanticizing Russia and taking tons of US-allied Gulf State money for massive development projects on its riverbanks.

What a world...

My good fellow Eastern Dude, no one mentioned Kosovo and Albania, so i have no idea why did you need to insert those into the equation. I was talking about interventionist tactics, but you already know that. Your word count is there to just muddy to waters of sincere discussion.

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 12:35 pm
Yeah, illiteracy is a bitch.

I have no problems understanding your BS here. I'm good.

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 12:35 pm We need to call the mods on you again?

You can call whoever you want, but good conscience discussion is just the only thing you'll never call on in your life.

You mentioned the bombing of Belgrade, no? You really don't think NATO's 1999 (as British and Turkish as it was American) bombing campaign had anything to do w/Belgrade's conflict in Kosovo and the Albanian diaspora? Seems pretty relevant to the conversation.

I realize that reading long paragraphs is extremely taxing for you compared to Twitter feeds and sexist rhetoric. Sorry, can't help you there.

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 12:56 pm I realize that reading long paragraphs is extremely taxing for you compared to Twitter feeds and sexist rhetoric. Sorry, can't help you there.

Help yourself first. Don't worry about me.

Lu Zwei wrote:

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 12:56 pm I realize that reading long paragraphs is extremely taxing for you compared to Twitter feeds and sexist rhetoric. Sorry, can't help you there.

Help yourself first. Don't worry about me.

Don't think "worried" is quite the word I'd use, but you clearly have some anger and/or impulse-control issues when it comes to this thread and maybe a few others. Even when someone posts something that has nothing to do w/you whatsoever, you have a really hard time w/opinions that differ from your own. And I'm far from the only person who has publicly noted what a drag that is.

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 1:31 pm

Lu Zwei wrote:

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 12:56 pm I realize that reading long paragraphs is extremely taxing for you compared to Twitter feeds and sexist rhetoric. Sorry, can't help you there.

Help yourself first. Don't worry about me.

Don't think "worried" is quite the word I'd use, but you clearly have some anger and/or impulse-control issues when it comes to this thread and maybe a few others. Even when someone posts something that has nothing to do w/you whatsoever, you have a really hard time w/opinions that differ from your own. And I'm far from the only person who has publicly noted what a drag that is.

My man, don't get me wrong, you're a nice guy, I like you just fine, but...