zazen

Again - read the comment your responding to where I said ''Movements outlive their initial intent - and once their core goals are achieved they need to find new paths to go down to survive. Feminism later grew offshoots that are deemed as unhelpful or unnecessary.'' There's variation among feminists (classical, liberal / progressive) and conservatives who've both deviated from their origins. Right wing red pill bro's aren't the same as traditional conservatives. It's like saying Muslims promote terrorism when its nutter offshoots like ISIS. The sex positive strand of feminism doesn't advocate to be "pumped and dumped" but removing the stigma and breaking norms around sex unleashed dynamics that produce exactly that. It delivered apex male utopia while thinking it was liberating women, chad-enomics. This is all of us using the same blanket term feminism talking past each other: Hooks up increasing isn't the same as it being a hook up culture. A behavior existing or increasing in the past isn't the same as that behavior being culturally mandated or normalised. Just like my comment said - structural changes happen that change behavior via new incentives ( in this case cars and theaters ). Culture adapts to that new environment after the fact - signalling what new norms are accepted or not. In that time the wider culture still had certain norms to restrain behaviour. A drive in date in a culture that expects courtship leading to marriage isn't equivalent to tinder hookups in a culture that celebrates no shame around body counts and has songs like WAP go mainstream. My boomer parents actually had their first chaperoned date at the theater and are still together today. In the past men didn't and couldn't just go around bedding the whole town easily. There was still cultural stigma and the expectation that hookup and sex means your now ''serious'' and on the way to Church to do vows. Today it's netflix and chill, and hope you aren't ghosted. Your done having your strawmen arguments blown over. I've said there's a middle way of balance we need to culturally come to, to manage a modern environment we aren't evolutionary adapted to. We evolved for one environment and are living in another. ''Modern society expanded freedoms faster than new stabilizing norms could emerge to exercise those freedoms responsibly.'' The path is narrow. Sensible people saying we need to constrain our behaviour and erect at least some walls gets conflated with we need to erect the same old walls that were overly repressive - which is is itself a lack of critical thinking and rationality.

There was no antibiotics then and it could spread through a small number of highly promiscuous people. But it doesn't mean it was normalised in society at a cultural level - more so tolerated at the margins hence brothels. The bible describing something is different to it prescribing it or endorsing it. Material advancements (pill, industrialization, internet, social media / dating apps) removed limits and changed incentives around chastity. But culture largely either embraces the removal of those limits and approves / disapproves of what behaviour is then normalized in that new environment. Modern society expanded freedoms faster than new stabilizing norms could emerge to exercise those freedoms responsibly. When men are asked to point to structural issues they get stumped largely because its not so much structural but cultural. There's no collection of visible law we can point to. It's the same way how post-civil rights racial discrimination still exists - people can be structurally free (by law) yet the culture can remain hostile or not healthy - which that takes time to evolve. In the same way - the general cultural discourse around and about men isn't healthy, and now even discourse about women isn't healthy with red pills emergence. We're in a toxic feedback loop. Movements outlive their initial intent - and once their core goals are achieved they need to find new paths to go down to survive. Feminism later grew offshoots that are deemed as unhelpful or unnecessary. The need for equal outcomes (rather than opportunity) or challenging norms around sexual behaviour - by removing any norms around it instead of having healthy norms take their place. It matters what is normalized rather than what is merely tolerated at the margins of society. For example - adults going to a cabaret show or burlesque behind closed doors where camera's usually aren't allowed - is different to Nikki Manaj twerking at a superbowl with the whole nation watching, including children. Edward Bernayes marketed cigarettes to women as a identity of liberation ''torches of freedom''. Today slutification is marketed as freedom and empowerment. Men can't objectify women but they can objectify themselves because its liberating when they do it - despite objectification still occurring. A good test is to imagine being father to a daughter then ask - what kind of society would we want her growing up in? What would we want to be seen as normal by the wider culture. We actually need some haram police - some shame is a healthy tool for stabilizing society. It's either the hard way by force (actual haram police like in Iran or Saudi Arabia), or the soft way by cultural and social conditioning that approves or disapproves of certain behaviors. Western society removed the harsh way but also doesn't want the soft way because it ''hurts feelings''. Accept everything, pluralism until hitler gets voted, don't be so JuDgMeNtAl - no, its called discernment.

Been a while since Teal Swan. A new vid of hers that’s relevant here:

No one’s said women shouldn’t work or that they should be chaste virgins. You’re seeing guys trying to troubleshoot / analyse the situation - and taking their descriptions as prescription. No one’s advocated for anything yet - Xonas only just asked Basman what he’s advocating for on the previous page. Many of you are simply assuming we have the worst solution as a default. Many guys don’t know the solution and are simply trying to make sense of things - let them, and help them. Thats why I made the distinction between different kinds of feminism - as everyone using the word and thinking different things in their head. I bet everyone here agrees more than they disagree on. It just takes some precise language to avoid being strawmanned. For example feminism isn’t solely the reason for today’s problems. It can’t be blamed for removing constraints that industrialisation, economic and technological advancements independently would have removed. But culture definetely can and does influence the norms we legitimise in those new environments - once constraints no longer exist. Material development removes limits and changes the environment, which changes incentives and behaviour as a result. Culture adapts or maladapts after the fact. What’s contested is that the later strands of feminism maladapted to the new environment by indulging in those new freedoms - sometimes in toxic ways with misandry seeping in as Natasha has mentioned before. Yes society evolves - I said that when I mentioned we’re in a transition where culture has to adapt to the new environment. I said the solution isn’t to regress to a toxic past but to have a balanced cultural approach and healthier norms be normalised. Sleeping around as female empowerment isn’t a healthy norm for example - neither is Andrew Tate or hookup culture where men revolve their life around bedding women. I pointed out red pill can have simplistic, reductive conclusions and you say I’m promoting misogyny lol read the comments your responding too. Then that I’ve lost my shit emotionally - I’ve commented 3 or so times on this thread calm as a cucumber. Meanwhile a few pages back @Nercohype said all right wingers are subhuman and you said an efficient solution is to imprison guys with dangerous rhetoric against women as their basically a terrorist group. Ya’ll have used terms like incels, subhuman, terrorists - and emotionally ranted against positions no one even made but that were only ever assumed - and yet we’re emotional? LOL Raze and Basman have been completely measured. AION somewhat too although he’s over generalised - but he hasn’t had some meltdown. Making a innacurate claim is simply making an inaccurate claim - doesn’t mean it’s an emotional argument. True though that we don’t quite live in a matriarchy. I think the matriarchy / patriarchy framing is too simplistic to use today - or it requires nuance as its domain specific with each sex dominating certain area’s more than the other. But there’s no closed exclusionary system of “classical” patriarchy today where women are legally barred access - even if we still get different outcomes with men disproportionately in top positions. All things being equal even in egalitarian societies like Nordics we see unequal outcomes. That’s what I commented to Lila above - not all disparities are due to injustice. There can def be social barriers ie discrimination - but that’s a very tricky things to handle ie social engineering outcomes. Top positions at least today seem to largely be due to selection pressures - by definition most men don’t even occupy the top positions. Those who do get there through massive filtering of those that are more high risk, high energy, willing to sacrifice work-life balance, work long hours and are ruthlessly ambitious. Women aren’t silly enough to seek out that sort of a life - most men aren’t even cut out for it. Men are overrepresented at both extremes - top and bottom. While women are increasing in the middle. Agree also. The definitions of each wave get a bit blurry for me also - but directionally it seems correct that the former stages were about removing unjust barriers whilst the later stages / strands and offshoots are trying to remove disparate outcomes they view as unjust. One is equality of law and opportunity which is settled, the other is seeking equality of outcome which requires social engineering to achieve and constantly maintain - because there won’t ever be equal outcomes, that are downstream from our own differences, including differences between the sexes that exist - but that we aren’t prisoners of either.

The point is yourself, @Lila9 and @Xonas Pitfall are assuming that men who discuss the current structural incentives and culture shaping how society interacts with those incentives in a negative way - are simply emotional incels who haven’t touched grass. Despite you guys commenting the most emotional rants here. The point is that a breakdown in certain norms are being discussed, perhaps wrongly or too simply. But the implications being drawn from this “dangerous thinking” is that “men” now advocate for or want a return to the same oppressive norms of the past. It’s easy to defeat a strawman argument no one made with white knight energy and feel heroic, than deal with nuance. The point is lack of substantive engagement with the points, just like with me responding to you on the topic of Islam to which you have no response. This challenges most of the Western liberal stance of the West in particular being ahead on the spiral dynamic ladder - celebrating achievements in acknowledging women’s moral worth that were already the case over a thousand years ago by a non Euro-centric civilization. @Lila9 The point is that not all disparities come from “patriarchal oppressive insecure men”. There are differences and preferences between sexes that lead to different outcomes even in an egalitarian society with equal rights and opportunity. This branch / later development of Feminism overextends itself and misuses / misapplies the concept of equality. See the video I shared above on “are men and women equal” and the following article: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190831-the-paradox-of-working-in-the-worlds-most-equal-countries ** The major point is that external structural constraints on sexuality have been removed through development (contraception, internet, education and urbanisation) and are no longer coming back. We evolved for one environment but live in another - ancient instincts, modern environment. Hardware / structure / material reality removes and sets limits - software / culture / psychology plays within them. Like the chicken or the egg scenario - what caused what first..cultural feminism or structural developments? In an interconnected reality mostly both. Red piller trad cons simplistically blame feminism for today’s issues whilst downplaying the shift in incentives a modern environment brings. I think most aren’t actually against classical feminism (1st-2nd wave, equal rights and opportunity) but are opposing progressive feminism (latter 3rd-4th wave, equal outcomes + challenging / breaking of norms specifically around sexuality). The red pill is men attempting to understand a dating market that’s rapidly changed because of those forces (structural and cultural) - often by embittered men who those changes don’t favour and who inevitably fall prey to simplistic, reductive conclusions. The reason red pill and pick up emerged in the West is due to those conditions. If we clearly aren’t dismantling modernity to go back to cave dwelling that put hard limits on our instincts and nature - then only culture can now constrain the worst of our instincts to stabilise society. We have an evolutionary mismatch that only culture can patch over through adaption. Culture usually lags, and during that lag there is turbulence - current time of transition. The cultural zeitgeist has so far been overcorrecting and indulging natures instincts through the frame of liberation. Any critique of that culture is seen as calling for regression to the past. Mostly likely as a protective reflex - because those freedoms were very hard won (rightly) and want to be protected. The critique largely isn’t about the freedoms but how to exercise them. Men could be more sophisticated in how they critique instead of being crude women bashers. The solution obviously isn’t to swing the other way culturally - but is to find a nuanced balance only culture will bring because of irreversible structural changes. We need to adapt by normalising new norms for a new environment - not just a breakdown of all norms that are then indulged in as freedom and liberation. Today’s environment requires far more conciousness and cultural nurturing to be healthy because of the evolutionary mismatch it’s created - across the board from sex to our diet. Culture influences how we deal with our environment, hence men and now even women increasingly critique progressive feminism’s breakdown of sexual norms. The answer isn’t red pill, progressive fem pill, or trad con pill but maybe God or wisdom pill. Issue is wisdom doesn’t scale. ** Civilisation isn’t an end point but is a continuous effort to nurture our nature to better ends. The foundation of any serious civilization isn’t and has never been unobstructed freedom of nature, but is instead constraints on the worst of our nature - that allows for higher freedoms as a result. Unconstrained freedom is chaos, that requires order - but order requires structure, which brings coordination, which inevitably brings hierarchy as a function. Civilization then is simultaneously about constraining domination (within hierarchy) and chaos (which results from having no order or hierarchy). Civilization is fundamentally a constraint system designed to stabilise human cooperation - but Western discourse has childishly elevated freedom and the individual to such a degree that any mention of “constraint” is now viewed as tyranny or repression.

@sholomar Brilliantly said

Good breakdown man - the times are uncertain as to how AI will have a cascading effect on many industries and “knowledge work” with now even creative work being disrupted. There could be a return to the “real world” where authentic reality becomes more valued - perhaps including “human made” work. Imagine instead of “Made in Italy” we have “Made by Human” as a marker of value. Almost like a vintage antique parallel world where human made becomes premium even if not as “perfect” as AI/robotic made products/production. Unreal how good seed dance 2.0 is that came out this week: I just watched Marty Supreme last night - nothing will beat that real gritty rawness of real world movie making imo.

Of course no denying any that. The hypocrisy doesn’t prove ideals didn't exist - every system establishes ideals we fail to live up to consistently - just like the ideals of today when the West backs Israels ethnic cleansing and all the other things it does whilst talking of human rights and promoting democracy. Same with Muslims who do everything under the sun then decline eating pork at the restaurant lol For sure: Not saying abuses didn't exist amongst Muslims, just like everywhere in the world especially in the past, and still today unfortunately. Islam actually gave women provisions and protections (legal personhood status, inheritance, rights etc) over a thousand years ago - the same standard we celebrate in the West today as recent ''developments''. No wonder Western women had to revolt. Coverture laws in English common law literally erased a woman's legal existence upon marriage - her property, earnings or ability enter contracts all became her husband's. The things Western modernity actually introduced that are genuinely new like mass political structures (nation states), industrial economies etc aren't so much moral achievements but material developments. With that also came better state capacity, institutions and enforcement mechanisms of laws and ''moral principles'' - such as treating women better by acknowledging their worth. But Islam had already introduced those moral principles millenia ago - despite material development lacking. Many cases of women winning in court over various affairs, inheritance etc in the Ottoman records etc - the ability to challenge men in court or be recognized legally wasn't even available in the West until recently. Even if we go by voting rights not existing for women in Islam - voting based democracies didn't exist anywhere so there's no way it could have. And even by that metric - large Muslim nations allow women to vote and have had women presidents whilst the beacon of freedom and liberty still hasn't (US). People still cherry pick Tali bro's as evidence of the exception when majority of Muslims and Muslim nations don't agree with their approach: The later videos of the women critiquing Saudi Arabia and or Iran if it comes up (haven't seen them) are right to do so. Those are frankenstein interpretations of Islam that are now thankfully changing. There's wide variation among Muslim's implementing Islam with a few core pillars remaining intact. Even with the punishment aspect - there's plenty of context behind applying them (including the entirety of the sharia). They were rarely applied (chopping hands for stealing) and mostly worked as a deterrent at a time when they didn't have prisons etc. That girl brought up the very reasonable point about the needy and starving being punished for stealing. A quick google AI search: ''Suspension During Famine: Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph, famously suspended the hadd (cut-off) punishment for stealing during a year of famine. Need as Doubt (Shubhah): Islamic jurisprudence holds that necessity, such as stealing to survive, creates a "doubt" (shubhah) that invalidates the application of the maximum punishment. Ruling by Scholars: Renowned jurists, including Ahmad ibn Hanbal, confirmed that the hand is not cut for theft when the act is driven by necessity during times of hardship.'' Developments in the West have definitely helped loosen the rigidity of gender roles and norms - but it's not like women in Islam were barred from economic roles either. The economies back then were just not developed to the same degree. In fact many women including the prophets wives ran successful businesses / were merchants and scholars that were revered and taught in positions of authority. His first marriage was monogamous and lasted 25 years till his wifes death (he was 25, she was 40). If his primary driver was sexual desire or accumulation of women that makes no sense. People try to imply things to him for the fact he had multiple wives - such as his lust or greed or desire for young pure women. From AI: ''They were widowed, vulnerable members of a war-torn society. Marriage was the welfare system. There were no pensions, no social services, no safety nets. Marriage was protection, status, and survival. In tribal Arabia, marriage was the primary way to form alliances. For example: Marriage to Juwayriya bint al-Harith led to: Her entire tribe being freed from captivity, hundreds of people gaining freedom, her tribe becoming allies instead of enemies Marriage to Safiyya bint Huyayy helped reconcile former Jewish tribal enemies and integrate them peacefully. Marriage to Aisha bint Abi Bakr strengthened the bond with Abu Bakr, his closest companion and future leader. These marriages stabilized a fragile society. They were state-building marriages.'' Guess even enlightened homeboy couldn't spin that many plates and had to cap it at 4 in the end. Ignore her proselytising at the end. So cringe and stupid when Muslims do that: Cool link. I would go by the definition of biological reality, not psychological reality where people identity as women or experience themselves as women.

Men and women are different, and naturally disparities show up. Progressives mistake is in thinking all disparity is unjust, trad cons mistake is thinking those disparities and differences are ''just the way things should be'' and that no deviation should be tolerated ie women/men belong only to their specific roles. Sexism is assigning moral superiority or inferiority based on those sexual differences - but its neither. It's just a matter of function downstream from biology, that produces generalities. Those generalities shouldn't be fixed prisons for either sex, but neither should they be ignored or attempt to be abolished ''women can do anything a man can do, and better'' rhetoric. There are real material constraints on both sexes that come in the way of either sex doing what each is able to do, to the level the other sex can do it more effortlessly. On the survival video for example - women tend to favor non-confrontation and consensus (which takes time) rather than clear hierarchy that is contested or seen as unfair - so in a survival scenario where time is of the essence men self-organise into a hierarchy quicker and are okay with a clear leader to follow and get on with things (in general). Also there's a clear bias towards physicality and strength in that environment which would favor them winning. None of us including you or Raze are even advocating for some past abusive system of ''patriarchy'' they think we are lol It's simply that external constraints have been removed through development (pill, internet, education) and now internal constraints on behaviour have more importance in maintaining certain norms that stabilise society - which is the domain of culture. Oppressive norms have been dismantled, but healthy norms haven't replaced them to the same degree. The same culture that rightly brought about equality of dignity, law, and opportunity is spilling over into equality of outcome and identical sameness. Cultural shifts aren't just celebrating removal of constraints but are encouraging / tolerating reckless behaviour in absence of those constraint - simply because its exercising newly won ''freedoms''. People can understand how a unregulated free market leads to a winner take all effect, but don't apply it the sexual market place (ooo i'm objectifying now - just get the point lol). Libertines are economic socialists but sexual capitalists. Obviously these things shouldn't be coerced either (enforced monogamy like Jordan Peterson once spoke about) but the wider cultural conversation should just lean towards long term planning, stability, and modesty (not prudeness) - for both men AND women. Both sexes should together discourage certain kinds of media being so prevalent. There's a difference between being free to do something, and being told by a wider discourse that you will find freedom in and through doing that act. Technically we'r allowed to sleep around with as many people - doesn't mean fulfillment or stability will be a consequence of it.

Existence of past hypocrisy doesn’t invalidate current observations. No one here is even saying they agree with past or current abuses or that we should go back. It’s soy to construct extreme assumptions no one ever made so that they can easily be ranted against heroically with white knight energy. Much like we have mixed economies instead of binary “capitalism vs socialism” we have a hybrid of patriarchy / matriarchy today - it’s more domain specific. In hard power (finance, military/security) and apex / top positions men still dominate, in soft power (education, HR, healthcare) and social roles women do. Men have command power while women increasingly have influence power that used to be limited to the household and is now scaled to institutions. Men are the head (command), women the neck that can some what turn that head (influence). Apex men broke norms and benefited the most (Hugh Hefner, Rock stars etc) whilst women largely normalised those same norms being broke through a feminist / liberatory lens. The biggest slut shamers used to be other women - today the biggest enforcers of “don’t slut shame” are also women. Talking about past or current patriarchy collapses men into one bucket that hides the inequality among men themselves. Men are both the rulers and the expendable class while women are underrepresented at both extremes and inhabit the middle “protected” class. Most men never had or could have mistresses or swap their wives for a younger one. Patriarchy was itself an unequal hierarchy amongst men. Just like today, the more visible predatory behaviour of some deplorable chads gets projected to most men.

@Elliott There's variation among conservatives too. Their some massive hypocrites and / or the overton window has shifted so far that they're operating within liberal norms, whilst thinking they're being conservative. If we compare to non-Western cons or more traditional minded migrants in the West even there's quite a difference. The trad cons and right wingers miss the stability of traditional systems, but still want the freedom of the modern system, especially the red bill bros. They talk of societal decline whilst spouting ''spin plates bro'' accelerating the decline. The chad types indulge and game the disparity created by the same freedoms they finger wag, whilst grifting incels to do the same. The Wests moral authority became the individual. Elevation of individual autonomy became the highest moral good - with feminism becoming one of the expressions, and spilling into other domains later. The earlier phase of feminism around legal rights etc is different to what later became license to ''do as thou wilt'' or not being ''judged'' for doing so especially around sexuality - framing any sort of constraint as repressive. Technology and development (contraception, washing machine, internet, education / urbanization) removed a lot of external constraints - but the culture/shift in consciousness removed the internal constraints on behaviour too. Structural changes shift incentives, cultural changes influence how we interact with those new incentives / environments. For example in the West there are many religious muslim's from conservative backgrounds still largely behaving traditional - despite being in a environment where no more constraints are there and if anything the influence to behave more degenerate are all around shown in music, movies etc. As the structural incentives change it becomes much harder to ''self-police'' or constrain ourselves - continuous conscious uphill battle. Which is why many conservatives try to change their environment to not be tempted - ie don't buy the cookies and ice cream and bring them into the house if on a diet, rather than burning willpower to not open the naught by snack cupboard in the kitchen. When a society lose a meta transcendent identity they self-sort into all kinds of sub groups / identities to feel rooted. Psychological apartheid energy.

Same - real protests hijacked by provocateurs as boasted about by Mike Pompeo etc. Very interesting take from Turkeys admiral:

If egalitarianism is a value or principle, socialist principles are just a method of achieving it. I think it depends how everyone is defining socialism and capitalism ie is socialism erasure of property rights/ownership or simply disciplining the market for social benefit. Today we largely have mixed economies but there are leanings where one side dominates. Blueoak is correct to critique the market as the only means to produce or provide something: @Elliott Markets naturally have short time horizons and lean to profit maximization. Some fundamentals / public goods need long time horizons / heavy upfront investment or are too critical to allow monopolistic control over leading to monopoly pricing. Norway has complete ownership or large stakes in many critical industries / public goods compared to UK for example where things have been privatized and prices have increased a lot. Norway also has a sovereign wealth fund - the key word there being sovereign. The main issue in the West and particularly UK/US more so is that they allowed capital to become too sovereign / autonomous and didn't maintain a hierarchy where the state is the apex authority / power center. Capital should be sub-ordinate to the state and national interest / development. The glamorised ''rugged individuals'' who built America - industrialist capitalists - had to be broken up due to becoming to powerful. Capitalists / libertarians attribute the golden era of of the US to them to justify capitalism but in reality the golden era came after them laying the foundation (literally tracks and rail roads). Even that was only enabled by massive land grants by the state so it wasn't just some lone individualist capitalists building the US. It's the equivalent of being given land by the state today - anything you build and the value you add is captured without the major upfront cost of acquiring the land eating into your profits. ''The golden era (roughly 1945–1970) only emerged after the state intervened to rebalance power. The state did three critical things: Broke monopolies (antitrust) Regulated finance tightly (Glass-Steagall, capital controls) Invested massively in infrastructure, education, and industrial capacity This subordinated capital to national development. Capital became productive and constrained.'' That was a anomaly. Things reverted back to extractive, speculative rentier oligarchy. Feudalism just became financialized and hollowed out the nation. The solution obviously isn't to go full socialist either because it messes incentives / pricing etc. Going by your reply to Blueoak I don't think he'd want to have the value of his labor re-distributed to you lol. Families in-fight over inheritance, friends get pissed for not splitting the bill fairly if they ate an extra chip - let alone scaling this to an entire nation. ''Toil for me comrade'' - doesn't work brother. The ego is undefeated and bhuddahood doesn't scale - not even in our era of internet access to gurus or Leo's body of work. Maybe we need state directed enforcement of airlines needing to only show high conscious material like Leo's youtube - but then libs will scream authoritarian for taking away their ''fReEdOM''. ''I wanna watch homeland and Kardashians yaaaas''

In-directly applying pressure to such a degree that once a threshold is crossed and people revolt we see crackdowns by the same regime that’s hardened by the same sanctions - causing them to act brutal to survive. We saw the culmination of that this year. Death counts anywhere from 5-30k+ - not sure what to believe but whatever the number its insane in such a short amount of days. Russia is far more resilient to the sanctions because it’s ''too big too fail'' in a sense. It wasn't sanctioned until much later because EU depends on their energy - sanctioning them hurts themselves. Even when it was, it wasn't fully isolated the same way as Iran was. Iran's been under sanctions far longer and far harsher so the pressures been built over time. They also don't have any exits / options for the people to migrate to as the regions either war torn or impossible borders to cross unlike Venezuela which releaved a lot of the pressure - millions migrating into neighboring countries. NK is a dystopia with fully locked down under a bunker mentality made for isolation. The people are tragically under total surveillance state control. No one can coordinate revolt. If a person steps out of line their entire bloodline gets affected and punished. Wiki, Yeonjwa: ''three to eight generations of a political offender's family can be summarily imprisoned or executed. Relatives are not told why they fell under suspicion and the punishment extends to children born in prison.'' What a shit hole - if there's one case of a country that deserves the entire world to rescue its people it would be NK but the fuckers have nukes.

The most basic stand on Iran is that the government needs to change (reform, not necessarily regime change) and that external actors shouldn’t intervene in counterintuitive un-ethical ways (sanctions or war) that only leads to hardening of the regimes posture under seige conditions and hardship / bloodbath for locals. Confessions of a economic hitman: Lesson learnt for 85% of the globe: participate in BRICS to hedge against this financialized imperialism that the US and West have monopoly over. OG Middle East expert: Liberalising requires surplus, which require stability, which requires at least some coercive capacity to begin with. The West went through internal repression, elite consolidation and coercive state building - externalized much violence through empire, then domestically liberalized. They had slack to do so - which no longer exists for late developers in a post-colonial world. Countries start to deal with human rights and liberal values once they have the conditions for it after securing the human right of survival and stability. The West's very own actions get in the way, sabotaging that sequence. Intervention by empire used to be justified by the “white mans burden” and is now laundered through “democracy promotion”. The same countries being “helped” get judged by countries that themselves went through and are at the end of that developmental sequence.