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.
What he’s doing is a bit more important than comedy. In my opinion he’s a better version of John Stewart, who was sometimes distractingly funny. Oliver, unlike Stewart, has never managed to get Tucker Carlson even the least bit cancelled, whereas Stewart went into the belly of the beast and revealed him to be such a helpless hack that Crossfire was, actually, cancelled. Oliver’s funny, to be sure, but I worry that he’s mostly funny to my demographic: nerdy ageing white guys.
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.
I am nauseated by the American pretense that Israel is anything other than an expansionist ethno-state.
Every year around easter, the christians would sometimes explode into violence, blaming the jews for killing jesus.
WARNING: War, Death, Sam Harris
WARNING: LONG