“This work is important because our ability to detect and correctly assign deaths during an epidemic goes to the heart of our understanding of the disease and how we organize our response,” says Nahid Bhadelia.
The undercount is pretty enormous, when you consider that the motive behind it is to avoid properly responding to epidemics/pandemics (now and in the future).
Yes, not to the same extent as in Europe, but the USSR were making big headway into Japan after liberating Berlin. Avoiding a situation where Japan surrendered to the Soviets was one motivating factor for the use of nukes.
Great screenshot
"Nazi Zionism will not win"
Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee
This was my favourite discovery of 2024. I love the music.
Quotes from Chpt. 10
Individuals without Integrity naturally compartmentalize and patriarchal masculinity normalizes male compartmentalization...compartmentalization is a way to avoid feeling pain.
We are all familiar with the man who goes to church on Sunday morning, believing that he loves God and God's creation and his fellow human beings, but who on Monday Morning has no trouble with his company's policy of dumping toxic waste in the local stream. He can do this because he has religion in one compartment and business in another.
Work is often the space where men detach from feelings. Zukav and Francis describe workaholism as a flight from emotions: "it is a drug that is as effective as most powerful anesthetic. Workaholism is a deep sleep, it is a self-induced trance that temporarily keeps painful emotions away from your awareness". At the moment when addictions stop keeping the pain at bay, many men sink into depression and as with so much male pain, it is only in recent years that men have been given societal permission to confront depression. Men suffer depression frequently because of their own unfulfilled expectations, or their perfectionism, which can never be satisfied, since to be human is to be imperfect.
The competitive performance model of patriarchy teaches men who father; that a son is, or will be, his adversary. That he has to fear the son stealing his glory. Our myths and religious stories are full of narratives in which the son is depicted as the father's enemy; ever poised to steal his power.
Only the man who chooses a healthy model; wherein the father figure, the adult man of integrity, the guide who shelters, protects and nurtures the son, can gracefully attend the assertion of his own son's healthy autonomy. When father figures are healthy, they know when to let go, they can affirm the boy every step of the way.
Men of Integrity are not ashamed to serve; they are caretakers, Guardians, keepers of the flame; they know Joy.
Quotes from Chpt. 11
To write about Men and Love I must speak of War. Time and time again, we have been told that Civilization cannot survive men's loving; for if men love, they will not be able to kill on command. However, if men were Natural Born Killers, hardwired by biology and Destiny to take life, then there would be no no need for patriarchal socialization to turn them into Killers. The Warrior's Way wounds boys and men, it has been the arrow shot through the heart of their Humanity. The Warrior's Way has led men in the direction of an impoverishment of spirit so profound that it threatens all life on planet Earth.
If we are to survive on this planet so threatened by War and warriors, you must get beyond the obsolete archetype of the Warrior, and value images such as the Peacemaker, the Partner, and the husbandman who cares for the earth and the animals. Even though war is failing as a strategy for sustaining life and creating safety, our nation's leaders force us into battle, giving new life to the dying patriarchy.
Most women in this study; whether married, single, or divorced of all ages, say they have not yet found the love they are looking for. The love women are looking for in relationships with men, is one based on mutuality and partnership...and mutuality is different from equality. Women once believed that men would give us more respect if we showed we were their equals, in a world where gender inequality is for most people an accepted Norm, men withhold from women their respect. The root of the word respect means: "to look at". Women want to be recognized, seen and cared about by the men in our lives. We desire respect, whether gender equality exists in all areas or not. When a woman and man have promised to give each other love, to be mutually supportive, to bring together care, commitment, knowledge, respect, responsibility and Trust. Even if there are circumstances of inequality, no one uses that difference to enforce domination. Love cannot coexist with domination.
Loving, sexual intimacy, expresses care and appreciation, it is mutual giving, not mutual taking. It is an arena in which individuals nurture each other, rather than exploit each other. In loving sexual intimacy, sexual partners are not interchangeable; they are unique in their histories, aptitudes, struggles and joys. They know each other and care for each other, they empathize, they are interested in each other, they use physical intimacies to deepen their emotional intimacies, they are committed to Growing together.
We yearn for boys and men to find their way to self-love. We yearn for boys and men to move from self-love to Healing fellowship with one another. No man who reclaims passion for his life, fears the passion in another man. He is not homophobic, for to be so would be a rejection of the self-acceptance and acceptance of others that is essential to the formation and maintenance of self-esteem. If all men were in touch with Primal positive passion, the categories of gay and straight would lose their charged significance.
Patriarchy has sought to repress and tame erotic passion, precisely because of its power to draw us into greater and greater communion with ourselves, with those we know most intimately, and with the stranger. Feminism changed the intimate lives of women and men, by offering to everyone, a vision of relationships rooted in mutuality. A vision of Partnerships without domination. This seductive promise can be fulfilled only as patriarchal thinking ceases to dominate the consciousness of women and men, girls and boys.
My biggest take-away from the book is that Patriarchy (and Patriarchal thinking) is far more pervasive than I give it credit for. There are very few men in my life who would embody the traits of non-patriarchal masculinity.
Regarding everyday changes from the book: the urge to be dominant is something I hate, unfortunately this book has re-ignited that hatred and I am witnessing it more and more amongst my colleagues. On a positive note, I would be try to steer some friends (especially those who have recently become parents) towards this book.
The final chapter covers the way to improve culture on the site. People who are seeking to improve or change themselves should be greeted with open arms. Hopefully the people who have some skills in introspection will be able to acknowledge that they need assistance with that and be given that guidance.
Chpt. 8
The Incredible Hulk...is a man always on the run, unable to develop lasting ties or intimacy. A Scientist by training, the ultimate personification of the rational man, when he experiences anger he turns into a creature of color and commits violent acts. After committing violence he changes back to his normal white male rational self, he has no memory of his actions, and therefore cannot assume responsibility for them. Unable to form sustained emotional bonds with friends and family he cannot love. He thrives on disconnection and disassociation...he is the symbol of the ultimate patriarchal man, alone on the road, forever drifting, driven by the Beast within.
Chpt. 9
Women are fearful of hearing men voice feelings. I did not want to hear the pain of my male partner, because hearing it required that I surrender my investment in the patriarchal ideal of the male as protector of the wounded. If he himself was wounded, then how could he protect me? As I matured, as my feminist consciousness developed to include the recognition of patriarchal abuse of men, I could hear male pain. I could see men as comrades and fellow Travelers on the journey of life and not as existing merely to provide instrumental support.
Talking with men, I've been stunned when individual males would confess to sharing intense feelings with a male buddy, only to have that buddy either interrupt to silence the sharing; offer no response; or distance himself. Men of all ages who want to talk about feelings usually learn not to go to other men, and if they are heterosexual, they are far more likely to try sharing with woman they have been sexually intimate with. Women talk about the fact that intimate conversation with males often takes place in the brief moments before and after sex. And of course our mass media provides the image again and again of the man who goes to a sex worker to share his feelings, because there is no intimacy in that relationship, and therefore no real emotional risk. Being "vulnerable" is an emotional state that many men seek to avoid. Some men spend a lifetime in a state of avoidance and therefore never experience intimacy. Sadly, we have all colluded with the patriarchy, by faking it with men, pretending levels of intimacy and closeness that we do not feel. We tell men we love them, when we feel we have absolutely no clue as to who they really are. We tell fathers we love them, when we are terrified to share our perceptions of them, out of fear that if we disagree we will be cast out, we'll be excommunicated. In this way we all collude with patriarchal culture to make men men feel they can have it all; that they can Embrace patriarchal manhood and still hold their loved ones dear. In reality, the more patriarchal a man is, the more disconnected he must be from feeling, and if he cannot feel he cannot connect, if he cannot connect he cannot be intimate.
Before most men can be intimate with others, they have to be intimate with themselves. They have to learn to feel and be aware of their feelings. Men who mask feelings, or suppress them, simply do not want to feel the pain. Since emotional pain is the feeling that most males have covered up, numbed out or closed off, the journey back to feeling is frequently through the portal of suffering. Much male rage covers up this place of suffering, this is the well-kept secret. Often when a female gets close to male pain, penetrating the male mask to see the emotional vulnerability beneath, she becomes a target for the rage. Shame at emotional vulnerability is often what men who are closed down emotionally seek to hide. Since shaming is often used to socialize boys away from their feeling selves, toward the patriarchal male mask, many grown men have an internal shaming voice.
You create intimacy when you shift from the pursuit of external power: the ability to manipulate and control, to the pursuit of authentic power: the alignment of your personality with your soul.
There is no denying that our happiness is inextricably bound up with the happiness of others. There is no denying that if Society suffers, we ourselves suffer. Thus, we can reject everything else; religion, ideology, all received wisdom, but we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion.
In chapter nine, the most interesting quote was about "loving" men who we fear, men we do not understand, men who are disconnected. It is interesting to think that collusion with the patriarchy can manifest itself as telling a male person that you love them (almost unconditionally).
I included part of the Dalai Lama quote, because it does speak about the suffering that people in society can see and feel from others around them.
Some quotes that resonated with me from Chapter six:
It is simply assumed in patriarchal culture that men should be willing to sacrifice meaningful emotional connections to 'get the job done'. No one has really tried to examine what men feel about the loss of time with children, partners and loved ones and the loss of time for self-development.
Many men use work as the place where they can flee from the self, from emotional awareness, where they can lose themselves and operate from a space of emotional numbness. Unemployment feels so emotionally threatening because it means that there would be time to fill, and most men in patriarchal culture do not want time on their hands.
We only seem to learn that the self is something that we need to control tightly since otherwise it might upset our plans.
when men gather together at work they rarely have meaningful conversations.. they jeer, they grandstand, they joke but they do not share their feelings. They relate in scripted limited ways careful to remain within the emotional boundaries set by patriarchal thinking about masculinity.
Imagine a non-patriarchal culture where counseling was available to all men to help them find the work that they are best suited to, that they can do with joy. Imagine work settings that offer timeouts where workers can take classes in relational recovery, where they might fellowship with other workers and build a community of solidarity that, at least if it could not change the arduous, depressing nature of labor itself, could make the workplace more bearable.
If men followed this example and used the workplace as a setting to practice relational skills and building community, the male crisis around work could be addressed more effectively.
Some quotes that resonated with me from Chapter seven:
Most men have clearly been will to resist Patriarchy when it interferes with individual desire, but they have not been willing to embrace Feminism as a movement that would challenge, change, and ultimately end Patriarchy.
Individual heterosexual women came to the movement from relationships where men were cruel, unkind, violent, unfaithful. Many of these men were Radical thinkers who participated in movements for social justice, speaking out on behalf of the workers, the poor, speaking out on behalf of Racial justice. However, when it came to the issue of gender, they were as sexist as their conservative cohorts.
Reformist Feminist women could not make this call because they were the group of women, mostly white women with class privilege, who had pushed the idea that all men were powerful in the first place. These were the women for whom feminist Liberation was more about getting their piece of the power pie and less about freeing masses of women, or less powerful men, from sexist oppression. They were not mad at their powerful daddies and husbands who kept poor men exploited and oppressed, they were mad that they were not being given equal access to power. Now that many of those women have gained power and especially economic parity with the men of their class, they have pretty much lost interest in Feminism.
Teachers of Children see gender equality mostly in terms of ensuring that girls get to have the same Privileges and rights as boys within the existing social structure. They do not see it in terms of granting boys the same rights as girls. For instance: the right to choose not to engage in aggressive or violent play; the right to play with dolls; to play dress up; to wear costumes of any gender; the right to choose.
In the Dominator model, the pursuit of external power, the ability to manipulate and control others is what matters most. When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent, but it will frame all relationships as power struggles.
The core of feminist masculinity is a commitment to gender equality and mutuality as crucial to inter-being and partnership in the creating and sustaining of life. Such a commitment always privileges non-violent action over violence, peace over war, and life over death.
As long as men dominate women, we cannot have love between us. That love and domination can coexist is one of the most powerful lies patriarchy tells us all, most men and women continue to believe it, but in truth love transforms domination. When men do the work of creating selves outside the patriarchal box, they create the emotional awareness needed for them to learn to love. Feminism makes it possible for women and men to know love.
Listening material: https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/the-deng-reform-period-w-ken-hammond-modern-chinese-history-pt-4
You can also buy Ken's book, I haven't read it, but I plan to in the near future
Book: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:China%27s_Revolution_and_the_Quest_for_a_Socialist_Future
Get this Zionist asshole out of here
And now for an interesting question: what if the Democratic Party’s 2024 campaign strategy had worked? What if they had somehow been able to win conservative votes without alienating progressive voters? Well, with the Republican Party electorally defeated, there would no longer be a basis for unity among the two camps of the Democratic Party’s voting constituency. Any policy decision which favors one camp would risk alienating the other camp, leaving the Party paralyzed, even if there were no Republican opposition. The contradictions within the Democratic Party’s constituency are such that winning elections comes at the expense of being able to do anything once in power, and doing anything while in power comes at the expense of winning elections.
Try explaining this to the consultants who wanted to proudly parade around the Cheney family as part of the campaign
maybe it's the beer talking