Can we uplift quality journalism that is also not filled with bought and paid for journalists and media.
The problem is that even completely independent journalists that take no ad revenue run into the issue of being captured by their audience.
If an independent journalist doesn't have a diverse audience, then anything that doesn't confirm that non-diverse audience's biases will face backlash, essentially repeating the issue of journalist's leaning on their careers instead of truth, but the enforcement mechanism is based around viewership/donation numbers and not corporate money.
Saddam was the state structure it wasn't like some organic thing existed through a shared nationalist identity.
Oh you've misunderstood what I've said. Sadam definitely wasn't some good leader that united the country, and I know we helped put him in power to stop the Iraqi Communists.
I'm just saying that the oppression had effectively held the country together for decades, and so when we arrived, stuff was a little more stable, and then we fucked it up.
Afghanistan had already been going through a civil war for a long, long, time. I wasn't making any value judgements like "Saddam is good", I was simply saying that Iraq was an easier situation than Afghanistan.
Yeah I was aware of the other ethnic/religious groups in Iraq, but haven't done enough research into them (except the Yazidis, ISIS made us get exposed to them in the west). I know about the Iraqi kurds and the factionalist fights they have, so it would make sense if the rest of the country was similar.
My point was really that a state structure already existed in Iraq, all the U.S. had to do was seize it while not damaging it too much in the process. (Or doing something stupid like idk firing the entire military and all the teachers and anyone remotely tied to Baathism)
Afghanistan would've taken far, far, far, more effort.
the fact that you basically gave the country to the iranian backed political groups which forms the backbone of a lot of political parties - security forces and businesses clashing with the rest of the very diverse iraqi society whether shia or sunni.
Possibly a bigger mistake than invading in the first place. Not completely sure how it could've been avoided without an endless occupation, but there had to have been a better solution than letting them fund opposition groups, and then letting them be one of the key military components against ISIS with the PMF system.
Yeahhhh Afghanistan was a shitshow. We were actually nation-building, not just nation rebuilding like we did in Iraq, a lot harder to create a national identity out of several tribes and ethnic groups than it is to change/"modernize" a nation like we did in Iraq.
Even Iraq had that issue with the sectarianism, but atleast almost everyone spoke the same language (sorry Kurds). Iraq had also had a national identity beat into them by the monarchy and then the Baathists, which probably helped as well.
Afghanistan never really had that.
The U.S. also had local opposition fighters to help them gain sympathy from the local population, and we were actually trying to nation build.
You can say that Fatah is basically that for Israel, but they aren't fighting in Gaza. If the fighting in Gaza was being done by Fatah, then global perceptions would probably be a lot different.
It would also probably involve less civilian deaths as Fatah would be much less likely just to bomb a neighborhood to get 10 Hamas fighters as opposed to actually fighting for it and taking casualties which is what Israel is currently doing.
Of course, this couldn't happen under the current Israeli government. They barely trust Fatah with enough weapons to be policemen in the West Bank, let alone enough to take a city of 2 million.
This is just blatantly false, if an organization is committing crimes or doing something the government dislikes then the government will sanction it, like it has done with almost every Russian Oligarch's business, or front businesses for terrorist groups.
I'm pretty sure the whole point of banning TikTok is that the government is alleging that TikTok has engaged/can be forced to engage in abusive or illegal practices.
The only one saying anything about TikTok in the video you linked is Romney, who didn't write the bill, and will soon be retiring, let alone his estrangment from his party, I don't think he has the influence to be a trustworthy source on why banning TikTok has broad bipartisan support.
I'm sure some of the Republicans may be thinking of things such as Gaza when trying to ban TikTok, but that's not an explanation for the swathes of democrats who have come out in support, saying that China is their reason.
I don't understand exactly what you're trying to refute. That's just Blinken saying that the decentralization of media is one of the key drivers of the changes in politics during the past decades.
Which is objectively true.
The Congressional Research Service has put out 3 reports in the past year about this, which I can't link here because they're PDF files, but you can find by googling "CRS TikTok".
According to the CRS, Chinese laws require that TikTok Have an internal communist party organization, and by law must have a member put on its Board of Directors by the CCP.
There has not been any proof made public of the Chinese influence on TikTok
Have you actually done research into that, or did you just hear it, and it confirmed your bias, so you took it to be true? The executive branch research departments and the GAO/CRS have been putting out reports for months on TikTok's ability as an influence tool.
You can say "nuh-uh" or "They wanna ban it so people like genocide again," but it's objectively true that TikTok can be used as a weapon, and we would be doing the exact same ban if VKontakte or Weibo suddenly became super popular.
Then why bring up the victim at all? Really just sounds like you're justifying what happened by saying "Well she took money for it, therefore consent".
You think that the Saudi population would rather keep living in a country that chops up journalists for fun?
The Saudi monarchy is entirely propped upon religious fundamentalism, and the oil currently ruining the climate, I say the sooner they find another system the better.
While they're definitely wrong in ignoring the communist party's value as a signal for disliking the regime/as a protest vote,
you're also feeding on propaganda if you think Navalny and his smart voting campaign weren't a very large movement.
If Navalny wasn't a threat to the regime, then Putin wouldn't have hounded him for a decade.
Pretty sure this is North Korea not China