This one is simple: people are (with good justification and for good reason) upset that the US is abandoning its Afghan allies, and (with good justification and for good reason) expect them to be torture-slaughtered as soon as the US military is no longer there to protect them.
I used to enjoy Mehdi Hasan’s work at The Intercept. He’s incredibly articulate, he does his research and all that thinky stuff, and he does not tolerate “both sides”-ism or bullshit. He’s climbing his way up the ladder of the media heirarchy, so he’s moved on from The Intercept to his own show on MSNBC.
One of the flaws in the concept of “History” is that important events trigger other important events, but that’s circular; it’s how we define “important.” Something is historically significant because a historian pointed at it and says, “See? Here is where that sequence of events got rolling.” That’s a conceit. Causality is real, in that events cascade in sequence and if one of them didn’t happen, subsequent events wouldn’t happen either, but human attempts to frame it are mostly an exercise in self-importance. In case you’re not up on it, that’s Michel Foucault’s main point: our interpretation of causes is always seen through a lens formed by existing power relationships.
When you’ve got search-strings in place for F-35 news, you can’t avoid the chest thumping regarding Israel’s F-35 and their proven effectiveness.
Pretty much: everyone. I wrote about it in 2016, when the scam was already under way with a full head of steam and an infinite budget [stderr]. It’s F-35 time!
From the “lesser of two evils” department, we have Joe Biden’s deep thoughts about Israel’s crimes against humanity.
The US wants to pretend to be a good broker, regarding Israel, while simultaneously offering unilateral and complete support. That’s a bad look when Israel is committing crimes against humanity.
This tidbit was on Al Jazeera but not the New York Times. We live in a high level of propaganda.
If you read the Failing New York Times‘ coverage of the Israeli bombing Gaza, it sounds like it’s all just something that kind of … happened. Nobody attacked a mosque full of Palestinians and injured over 170, firing rubber-covered steel bullets into the mosque, you know, the bullets were just flying through the air when they happened to hit some people. And some airplanes happened to be flying over dropping bombs, etc.
This is a page or so from Collins and LaPierre’s excellent book O Jerusalem, which is billed as a “blow by blow account of the founding of Israel” and they’re not kidding. In some bits it gets down to hour by hour breakdowns of what happened. “What happened” is generally horrible for everyone involved, whether they were the winner or the loser. [wc] Most Americans have no real understanding of the history of Israel, and consequently they fall for false narratives. I suspect that most Israelis, now, also fall for the propaganda. It makes it much easier for the state to do what it wants to do, and easier for it to promote a false moral history.
“Blowback” is the CIA’s term for “nasty things that happen because of something we did, which we did not plan for.” I guess that makes it sound a bit like it’s not our fault; it’s just something that happened, gosh, it’s time to move on already isn’t it?