It happens to the extent that hundreds of millions of people in the US get their news from TV. And those mega TV companies decide to reinforce that fact that allies get covered and non allies get nothing. That’s not trivial. So it’s not oversimplification: it’s reality.
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I think it’s worthwhile to distinguish between motivations and actions. Someone whose family was expelled from Palestine to make way for foreign colonists has a legitimate grievance. Choosing to murder a bunch of civilians is not a legitimate response to that grievance. But we’ll never have peace if we pretend that guilt is binary and all that matters is who committed the most recent atrocity. There’s plenty of guilt to go around.
Plenty of people volunteer to kill and die for Capitalism (under the guise of “truth, justice, and the American way,” etc.) I don’t think suicide bombing is strictly required.
On the other hand, I don’t think reducing complex people to simple villains is a stand-out trait of capitalism, so much as the entire human race.
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Sure, it’s a reality for them - but most people are neither a government nor a television company. Which is why I asked, what is the incentive for anybody else to buy into it? Most people don’t seem to be actively involved in this process, they are only along for the ride. Assuming that the reality of a petty minority is yours is the oversimplification, the denial of other realities which are often at least as relevant. How do you pick the best amongst the competing systems?
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Freedom of the press is all very well, but it doesn’t mean a damn without proper regulation of the concentration of media ownership… Murdoch’s empire needs to be dismantled before any sane public discourse can be had.
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I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a country. I think the poster is confusing Afghanistan for Iraq though.
I dunno. Go to France? That’s what I did. I can’t say I’ve been to Beirut though. I have been to Egypt and Turkey and while Turkey has European-like elements, neither culture was very similar to what we have in the U.S. France is different but its relationship and shared history with our own is pretty obvious if you spend time there and interact with the French.
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You do realize that, by definition, there is only one reality, right?
As Philip K. Dick said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
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I think part of it is the way that we* often build a picture of other places involving the kind of things we might expect to hear of, based on previous things we’ve seen in the news. Paris… That’s one of the best-known tourist destinations in the world that you may well visit on a trip to Europe, and is famous for love, beautiful architecture, secularism etc. It’s stable and way over in western Europe, so anything that happens there could happen anywhere (at least in Europe).
On the other hand, many people haven’t heard a huge amount of peaceful stuff about Lebanon, even though it has a rich culture and history. Searching for Lebanon news with the last few days excluded is nothing but a list of conflicts, terror attacks, the refugee crisis, political unrest, sectarianism etc. That’s a country next to Syria, right? Where violence is spilling over and the country is held by four different entities including IS? Isn’t that the country that has a disambiguation page for wars in that country since 1975, one of which is ongoing? Isn’t the biggest influx of refugees since WWII coming from that region? It’s not necessarily that people care less about people from there (although identification will be a factor), but expected news from the area around Syria has been at “gone to shit” for quite some time.
(* Of course I don’t mean you, @popobawa4u)
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Oh, you are hilarious, Mr. Bill. I am not even going there because I do not have enough tokens for a 2am ride on the merry go round.
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Not to mention, US ally in two World Wars, close friend of the US after the same (after American soldiers fought and died to liberate France), and a long social history of writers and artists from both countries going to the other…
Hell, a significant portion of my ancestors came from France about 200 years ago. I’m not Lebanese at all. My wife has a French degree and lived near Marseilles during college.
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I forgot that some local folks think of reality as a “Choose your own adventure” book.
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A mandatory device that tracks every action and sound you make inside your car? I can just imagine the BB headlines…
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I want one. I would put it right under the driver’s seat where I fart constantly.
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Chinese government begs to differ.
You can be pretty sure about what I meant, but you are wrong. as Wikipedia says,
“The War in Afghanistan … is the period in which the United States invaded Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.”. Perhaps, like certain American presidents, you have trouble telling all those far off countries apart.
Iraq was different - the MIC wanted to do the Saudis a favor while getting rich off taxpayers, which they duly did. But the evidence is that the terrorists hung out in Pakistan, yet it was Afghanistan that got invaded. Because Pakistani generals are friends of the likes of Cheney,and so it wasn’t politically possible at the timeto go for the tribal areas where the real problems lay.
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Not a surprising perspective to hear from somebody who IIRC opines that ontology completed its mission sometime in the 19th century. If your state vector has collapsed, you can borrow one of mine.
Hey, listen, I get mansplained to on boingboing, and I’m not even female!
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Just as an update to this: the Egyptian passport belonged to a victim, Waleed Abdel-Razzak - he is a football fan who was near the stadium at the time of the attacks. Waleed is alive, but in critical condition.
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Actually the IRA is officially Leninist and the Provisional IRA is Trotskyite. The foot soldiers were probably far more interested in getting their jollies killing people (and getting paid for it), but the heads of the IRA were officially committed to world wide Communism.
It is reported that visitors from Cuba shook their heads over the fact that a number of IRA men still went to Mass.
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Maybe it’s finally fucking time to put in a leader that doesn’t further endanger our world?
Bernie Sanders Predicts the Rise of ISIS in 2002
We should have listened to Bernie Sanders then (and now) instead of listening to and following people like Hillary Clinton who lead us to a more dangerous world.
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