How much do people follow the news

[Mas-sa-suta]

If your point is accuracy, where does your '10 million' number originate? If your point is whether the Zionists are waging genocide against unarmed, starving non-combatants, half of whom are children, the answer is absolutely they are. The Zionists consider Palestinian children vermin.
I've lost nothing.
You say..'I place the blame on Hamas, radical Fascist..blah,blah,blah...'
So you are fine with retribution against children....apparently radical, Fascist, Fundamentalist children.

Disgusting..

 

[NPT]

I suspect it has, people get their "news" from Twitter which is part of problem.

But I heard a quote long ago, Americans would rather discuss the Yankees instead of the news. That is very accurate, and always has been. We have always had these citizens, it is fine. But now they can get their 10 minute fix from following the crazy people.

The problem is you can't get the news from watching the "news" because they all have an agenda.

I won't even watch the weather on the local news because they give you 30 second segments of the weather throughout the entire news cast.. If they start off with "coming up" and then list a story that they're gonna tell you know that story is gonna be at the end so I don't bother watching even if it's a story I'm interested in. I'll record it and go to the end to watch it.

 

[BradStevens]

If your point is accuracy, where does your '10 million' number originate? If your point is whether the Zionists are waging genocide against unarmed, starving non-combatants, half of whom are children, the answer is absolutely they are. The Zionists consider Palestinian children vermin.
I've lost nothing.
You say..'I place the blame on Hamas, radical Fascist..blah,blah,blah...'
So you are fine with retribution against children....apparently radical, Fascist, Fundamentalist children.

Disgusting..

The ten million was a mistake. You said one million. You’re still off in deaths by 5 orders of magnitude.

You can use charged rhetoric all you want, you can feign moral outrage at my arguments (no one believes that, by the way), but such argumentative slight-of-hand doesn’t provide proof, it doesn’t change logic, and it doesn’t cover up your deliberate misinterpretation of what I have argued.

You have no proof for the Israeli populace or majority of people in power believing Palestinian children are “vermin.” Because they don’t. Some hardcore religious Israelis no doubt do, I’ll grant. But they’re no more indicative of Israel as a whole than you are of the United States as a whole.

You can’t point to a statement I made saying I thought retribution justified against innocent children. Because I didn’t write that.

And you can’t differentiate Israel’s actions and the resultant effects on minor civilians in the war zone from the Allies actions in WW2 Germany or Japan.

 

[Stuffshot]

Politics is consistently dishonest.

News coverage is Inherently dishonest so we have dishonesty x 2 when watching the news about politics.

Then when we spread ignorance over all of it, we have a disaster.

Rarely is political news intended to be informative. All of it is intended to be persuasive and foment anger.

Take this passage from your quote:

“the rare ousting of a House speaker amidst worsening Republican dysfunction,”

Under 4% of the GOP voted to oust the speaker, 100% of the democrats voted to do that. Let this sink in. The House of Representatives together had an opportunity to put the crazies in their place and make this a non-issue; the House couldn’t even manage to do that. The “news” not only made it worse, it gave a level of prominence to the crazies.

The news sucks.

In a traditional newspaper, the editorial page was only one page. Now, people who never read a true pre-internet newspaper think "the news" is 99% unsupported, partisan opinion.

And everyone that can afford a $400 laptop can claim to be "journalists," and entitled to express their unsupported opinions.

No wonder younger age groups say they do not believe "the news." They don't know what it is.

 

[Bowlmania]

slight-of-hand

sleight of hand

And you can’t differentiate Israel’s actions and the resultant effects on minor civilians in the war zone from the Allies actions in WW2 Germany or Japan.

You’re echoing Netanyahu’s fallacious argument that he has used to justify the brutality that’s being inflicted on Gaza civilians.

First, the rules have changed since World War II, leading to important enhancements in international law. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights was subsequently codified in a number of treaties and covenants including the Geneva Conventions. The Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) and the follow-up protocols of 1977 were adopted to protect non-combatants in conflicts and lessen their suffering in war zones. The concept of proportionality in conflict was included in Article 51 of Additional Protocol 1. Any claims of Israel simply acting in self-defense after the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7 have long since been invalidated by the disproportionality of the response.

Satellite images reflect that between 50% and 61% of Gaza's buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Almost the entire Gaza population of over 2 million people has been displaced. Famine is imminent in northern Gaza between now and May. The entire population of Gaza could be in famine by July. At least 30,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, with women and children constituting a majority of the casualties. On March 12, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) wrote that the number of children killed in just over four months in Gaza is higher than the number of children killed in four years of wars around the world. 162 staff members of UNRWA have been killed. Humanitarian aid has been impeded, and hospitals, ambulances and doctors have been targeted. In late February, an IDF tank shot up a clearly-marked MSF (Doctors Without Borders) shelter after MSF had provided the Israeli army with the shelter’s exact location as a precaution. No warning was given before the shelter was shelled.

Finally, the situation in Gaza is likely much worse than we can imagine. Our understanding of the breadth and scope of the horrific and worsening crisis is limited as a result of Israel’s ban (with very few exceptions) on journalists in Gaza.

Comparing Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of Allied forces during WWII is misguided.

 

[Bloom.]

Not to change the topic or ignore your question re parliamentary but the internet has changed things significantly imo. I watch zero tv news and probably devote ten minutes a week to political news. But I feel like that’s all you need to have a general idea of what’s going on as that’s all it takes to read the political headlines that appear online.

That explains the problem right there.

 

[BradStevens]

sleight of hand


You’re echoing Netanyahu’s fallacious argument that he has used to justify the brutality that’s being inflicted on Gaza civilians.

First, the rules have changed since World War II, leading to important enhancements in international law. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights was subsequently codified in a number of treaties and covenants including the Geneva Conventions. The Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) and the follow-up protocols of 1977 were adopted to protect non-combatants in conflicts and lessen their suffering in war zones. The concept of proportionality in conflict was included in Article 51 of Additional Protocol 1. Any claims of Israel simply acting in self-defense after the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7 have long since been invalidated by the disproportionality of the response.

Satellite images reflect that between 50% and 61% of Gaza's buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Almost the entire Gaza population of over 2 million people has been displaced. Famine is imminent in northern Gaza between now and May. The entire population of Gaza could be in famine by July. At least 30,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, with women and children constituting a majority of the casualties. On March 12, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) wrote that the number of children killed in just over four months in Gaza is higher than the number of children killed in four years of wars around the world. 162 staff members of UNRWA have been killed. Humanitarian aid has been impeded, and hospitals, ambulances and doctors have been targeted. In late February, an IDF tank shot up a clearly-marked MSF (Doctors Without Borders) shelter after MSF had provided the Israeli army with the shelter’s exact location as a precaution. No warning was given before the shelter was shelled.

Finally, the situation in Gaza is likely much worse than we can imagine. Our understanding of the breadth and scope of the horrific and worsening crisis is limited as a result of Israel’s ban (with very few exceptions) on journalists in Gaza.

Comparing Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of Allied forces during WWII is misguided.

Thanks for the correction on the wording. Also, thanks for treating this as a subject to be debated and not name calling. Here's a long-winded, perhaps contradictory, but top-of-my-head response on these issues:

The "rules" of international law might have changed since WW 2, but does that change how you or I assign moral weight to actions and consequences? Also are you saying that under current international law, the Allies committed war crimes against Germany during WW 2? Do you want Israelis to be prosecuted for war crimes for what's going on in Gaza right now?

I disagree that Israel isn't still acting in self defense. Hamas has pledged they will keep committing atrocities like October 7th again and again and again until they destroy Israel. The only way for Israel to protect itself is to try to completely dismantle and destroy Hamas or have Hamas and Gaza sue for complete surrender, just as happened in WW 2. Given that war aim, the proportionality argument doesn't hold water. I've posted about this before: it's not a mathematical formula. It's whether or not the deaths are "excessive" when compared to the military objectives. They are not here, I think, and one reason that they are not, is because Hamas intentionally uses civilians as shields. That's Hamas's fault, 100%, and not the Israelis' fault.

I don't like that this is happening. I abhor the death and destruction. But I don't fault Israel morally for doing this (I might fault them tactically, though, if this isn't the right way to go about achieving their ends). And they are making efforts to protect the civilians, which you make no mention of. As for your list of Israel's errors in prosecuting the war, a lot of that comes from Hamas-based sources. If you could provide links to objective sources, that would be helpful. That said, no nation can prosecute a clean, perfectly morally just war. That's why you don't start one, and if you do, you are to blame for the consequences.

A lot of our disagreement, I realize as I type this, might come down to how we think about the act and practice of war. As a lawyer, I understand all too well the desire to apply rules to war. And it's a mark of moral achievement that Israel feels constrained about what they can and cannot do, I supposed. But I also think war is a process that is not really amenable to these rules--that once you invoke it, you are now in the realm of death and murder and destruction by definition, and so many of the rules of morality are "suspended." (That's obviously easier for me, as an atheist, than for those who think a deity makes morality non-contextual). Actions in that realm are judged by efficacy and pragmatic survival, and that's just about it.

It's one of the reasons I feel a strong pull to ideas espoused by NewFarvaGoo and even Mas about their hatred for "war mongering" and "neocons." War should always be the last resort and everything should be tried before it is invoked. But once another nation invokes it against yours, you should do everything to win it and not be destroyed.

Going back to the beginning, then, if I can delineate one nation/group as totally or overwhelmingly at fault for the start of a war (like Hamas, Al Queda, etc.), then I assign near total moral weight to that party. After that, it's tough for me to fault the response of a party fighting for its actual existence. But to the extent I can, I've seen no evidence that Israel is intentionally targeting children, as argued by Mas, and I have heard many reports of Israel engaging in tactics to protect Gazan civilians at the cost of their own soldiers' lives. (A nation wishing to perform genocide wouldn't do that.) If Israel wanted to level Gaza, it wouldn't have needed to send a single soldier in on the ground to do that, either.

 

[Bloom.]

In a traditional newspaper, the editorial page was only one page. Now, people who never read a true pre-internet newspaper think "the news" is 99% unsupported, partisan opinion.

And everyone that can afford a $400 laptop can claim to be "journalists," and entitled to express their unsupported opinions.

No wonder younger age groups say they do not believe "the news." They don't know what it is.

If adults who claim they're adept on issues can't tell the difference between reporting and opinion, not sure how younger age groups can. There isn't a ton of actual reporting linked in here. Much of it is from their favorite take site. They might occasionally cherry pick are article from a source they often claim is biased against their views, in an effort to sound balanced, but it's not hard to tell as they talk about the article.

Then again, the only media sources I directly pay for are the Indy Star, occasionally the IBJ and ESPN+.

 

[Bowlmania]

thanks for treating this as a subject to be debated and not name calling.

That's generally not my M.O.

 

[Bowlmania]

Thanks for the correction on the wording. Also, thanks for treating this as a subject to be debated and not name calling. Here's a long-winded, perhaps contradictory, but top-of-my-head response on these issues:

The "rules" of international law might have changed since WW 2, but does that change how you or I assign moral weight to actions and consequences? Also are you saying that under current international law, the Allies committed war crimes against Germany during WW 2? Do you want Israelis to be prosecuted for war crimes for what's going on in Gaza right now?

I disagree that Israel isn't still acting in self defense. Hamas has pledged they will keep committing atrocities like October 7th again and again and again until they destroy Israel. The only way for Israel to protect itself is to try to completely dismantle and destroy Hamas or have Hamas and Gaza sue for complete surrender, just as happened in WW 2. Given that war aim, the proportionality argument doesn't hold water. I've posted about this before: it's not a mathematical formula. It's whether or not the deaths are "excessive" when compared to the military objectives. They are not here, I think, and one reason that they are not, is because Hamas intentionally uses civilians as shields. That's Hamas's fault, 100%, and not the Israelis' fault.

I don't like that this is happening. I abhor the death and destruction. But I don't fault Israel morally for doing this (I might fault them tactically, though, if this isn't the right way to go about achieving their ends). And they are making efforts to protect the civilians, which you make no mention of. As for your list of Israel's errors in prosecuting the war, a lot of that comes from Hamas-based sources. If you could provide links to objective sources, that would be helpful. That said, no nation can prosecute a clean, perfectly morally just war. That's why you don't start one, and if you do, you are to blame for the consequences.

A lot of our disagreement, I realize as I type this, might come down to how we think about the act and practice of war. As a lawyer, I understand all too well the desire to apply rules to war. And it's a mark of moral achievement that Israel feels constrained about what they can and cannot do, I supposed. But I also think war is a process that is not really amenable to these rules--that once you invoke it, you are now in the realm of death and murder and destruction by definition, and so many of the rules of morality are "suspended." (That's obviously easier for me, as an atheist, than for those who think a deity makes morality non-contextual). Actions in that realm are judged by efficacy and pragmatic survival, and that's just about it.

It's one of the reasons I feel a strong pull to ideas espoused by NewFarvaGoo and even Mas about their hatred for "war mongering" and "neocons." War should always be the last resort and everything should be tried before it is invoked. But once another nation invokes it against yours, you should do everything to win it and not be destroyed.

Going back to the beginning, then, if I can delineate one nation/group as totally or overwhelmingly at fault for the start of a war (like Hamas, Al Queda, etc.), then I assign near total moral weight to that party. After that, it's tough for me to fault the response of a party fighting for its actual existence. But to the extent I can, I've seen no evidence that Israel is intentionally targeting children, as argued by Mas, and I have heard many reports of Israel engaging in tactics to protect Gazan civilians at the cost of their own soldiers' lives. (A nation wishing to perform genocide wouldn't do that.) If Israel wanted to level Gaza, it wouldn't have needed to send a single soldier in on the ground to do that, either.

No need to reference Mas's position in your response to me. He and I come at this from very different places.

I never claimed Israel is intentionally targeting children. What I do know is that, according to our DNI, almost half of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel dropped on Gaza between the start of the war and the end of the year were unguided (often referred to as "dumb bombs"). That suggests a callous indifference for the lives of civilians, arguably a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and a clear violation of Article 51 of the first Additional Protocol.

It seems you want to gloss over the concept of proportionality and international law. I don't.

Sounds like you might have been a fan of Henry Kissinger and his "realism" approach to war - - the belief that moral standards are not applicable to war; the idea that war can't be immoral, only more or less advantageous for the state. I can't subscribe to that.

Heading out with my family. Have a great day.

 

[BradStevens]

No need to reference Mas's position in your response to me. He and I come at this from very different places.

I never claimed Israel is intentionally targeting children. What I do know is that, according to our DNI, almost half of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel dropped on Gaza between the start of the war and the end of the year were unguided (often referred to as "dumb bombs"). That suggests a callous indifference for the lives of civilians, arguably a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and a clear violation of Article 51 of the first Additional Protocol.

It seems you want to gloss over the concept of proportionality and international law. I don't.

Sounds like you might have been a fan of Henry Kissinger and his "realism" approach to war - - the belief that moral standards are not applicable to war; the idea that war can't be immoral, only more or less advantageous for the state. I can't subscribe to that.

Heading out with my family. Have a great day.

I'm probably not 100% in any camp, vis a vis Kissinger and realism. I think the idea you attribute to him is right, to a degree. I think the idea that you can apply morality to nations in war, is debatable, but can see how it might apply and am wary of saying it could never apply.

I don't think I'm glossing over the concept of proportionality--I'm tackling it head on and using the actual definition in international law in the post above and in previous posts. I admit I could be wrong, but I'm not ignoring it.

Your assumption that Israel's dumb bomb usage rate suggest a violation of international law or callous indifference is contradicted by this piece and the DoD experts quoted within:

Amid outcry over civilian casualties in Gaza, experts note Israel's so-called 'dumb bombs' can be used with precision

So-called "dumb bombs" can be deployed in conjunction with dive bombing to improve accuracy, according to experts.

abcnews.go.com

Here is a more balanced article from the Economist (that contradicts some of the quotes in the ABC article) although the experts quoted also support the notion that Israel doesn't have to use smart bombs to hit their targets, but allowing that use of dumb bombs possibly can result in more deaths:

Why is Israel using so many dumb bombs in Gaza?

Smart bombs are more precise but less plentiful. More civilians in Gaza may be dying as a result

www.economist.com

 

[CO. Hoosier]

sleight of hand


You’re echoing Netanyahu’s fallacious argument that he has used to justify the brutality that’s being inflicted on Gaza civilians.

First, the rules have changed since World War II, leading to important enhancements in international law. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights was subsequently codified in a number of treaties and covenants including the Geneva Conventions. The Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) and the follow-up protocols of 1977 were adopted to protect non-combatants in conflicts and lessen their suffering in war zones. The concept of proportionality in conflict was included in Article 51 of Additional Protocol 1. Any claims of Israel simply acting in self-defense after the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7 have long since been invalidated by the disproportionality of the response.

Satellite images reflect that between 50% and 61% of Gaza's buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Almost the entire Gaza population of over 2 million people has been displaced. Famine is imminent in northern Gaza between now and May. The entire population of Gaza could be in famine by July. At least 30,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, with women and children constituting a majority of the casualties. On March 12, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) wrote that the number of children killed in just over four months in Gaza is higher than the number of children killed in four years of wars around the world. 162 staff members of UNRWA have been killed. Humanitarian aid has been impeded, and hospitals, ambulances and doctors have been targeted. In late February, an IDF tank shot up a clearly-marked MSF (Doctors Without Borders) shelter after MSF had provided the Israeli army with the shelter’s exact location as a precaution. No warning was given before the shelter was shelled.

Finally, the situation in Gaza is likely much worse than we can imagine. Our understanding of the breadth and scope of the horrific and worsening crisis is limited as a result of Israel’s ban (with very few exceptions) on journalists in Gaza.

Comparing Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of Allied forces during WWII is misguided.

Seventy-one percent of Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank believe Hamas made the right decision in attacking Israel on October 7, according to a new poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an organization primarily funded by the European Union and the United States- ...​

October 7 was planned barbarism. It wasn’t a case of pissed off fighters getting out of hand. It was a product of generations of deliberately implanted Jew hatred in Palestinians. If we are interested in total peace in the region, the hatred must be demolished.. Not remodeled. Not accommodated. Not tolerated. Not sanctioned with two-state nonsense. The time has come to end it. Like deNazification. Sure, there Will be awfulness for those who are caught up in the misery war brings. But Hamas built a network of underground fortifications, weapons caches, and command posts with the tacit if not expressed approval of civilians, and they stole funds intended for humanitarian purposes to do it. What is happening now in Gaza is not on Israel, is the result of decades of US and the West’s misguided policy centered on the notion of some kind of peaceful coexistence.

October 7 proved this to be a fraud and a lie. Enough.

​

 

[JamieDimonsBalls]

I suspect it has, people get their "news" from Twitter which is part of problem.

But I heard a quote long ago, Americans would rather discuss the Yankees instead of the news. That is very accurate, and always has been. We have always had these citizens, it is fine. But now they can get their 10 minute fix from following the crazy people.

Is it really the problem? Credibility of CNN, NBC, Fox, etc. are at all time lows.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Is it really the problem? Credibility of CNN, NBC, Fox, etc. are at all time lows.

You see the stuff db posts from Twitter, do you think Fox/CNN etc are worse (or as bad).

 

[Joe_Hoopsier]

(often referred to as "dumb bombs").

all of your posts/ thoughts here

 

[Indyhorn]

I watch local and national news at 6pm to 7pm- I also read a periodical called The Week. I’ve got Apple News as well.

 

[hoot1]

The news is important to me.

Watch C-Span's Washinton Journal first thing in the morning. Washington pols selected from both parties are usually not the crazies. The crazies are the callers from both parties. Experts on various subjects reflect a cross section of political ideologies and almost always have researched the subject thoroughly.

Seldom miss the nightly PBS Newshour, or the Zakaria GPS Sunday program which gives a global perspective with prominent world leaders, researchers, and journalists.

Special treat is watching Jonathan Capehart (Democrat) and David Brooks (Republican) on Friday's PBS Newshour. Viewing politics with two moderate gentlemen who can often agree on issues offers some hope that compromise and progress still exists.

For the vital news on state politics, the Indianapolis Star does a good, and in my view a fair job of informing the public. Also never miss Indiana Week in Review on PBS with pols and journalists discussing state politics with emphasis on what the state legislator is doing.