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Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by ConfuciusSay02 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @12:30PM (#13978039)
More dangerous than lying us into foreign wars that kill millions of people and bankrupt the country?

That's quite a high bar.

Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by dave_sullivan on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @04:23PM (#13980320)
That's a cheap and lazy argument, trying to deflect attention from the crimes of one party by discussing the crimes of another. They're both dangerous enough to kill you; both should be discussed as separate issues, not as a comparison.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by brazzledazzle on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @08:47PM (#13982306)
I think it's technically the same party but you wouldn't know it by looking at them.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by ConfuciusSay02 on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @12:57PM (#14034801)
It was the OP who made the comparison - I was simply replying.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by kristianc on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @03:38PM (#13979925)
GWB's first term average approval rating was 62% and at one point was as high as 90%. A lot of Americans have since found their opposition to these illegal foreign wars.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by rfrank on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @03:46PM (#13980006)
The antiwar left basically disappeared when Obama took office.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by TheRealDunkirk on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @05:38PM (#13980948)
A commenter above says that it's a proven fact that Fox News is interested in nothing but propaganda, and the NYT is dedicated to truth, though they occasionally fail. When I look back on the Bush administration, and I think about how Code Pink was pushed front-and-center for 8 years by ABC/NBC/CBS, protesting the war(s), and how they absolutely disappeared once Obama took over, even though he materially continued the same policy in the middle east, I can't help but feel that every organization that is NOT Fox News was joined together in PRECISELY the same sort of propaganda that Fox is accused of. But, hey, I guess it's just me.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by rfrank on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @05:47PM (#13981021)
Hah, I'm the one arguing with those people too. People don't like to admit to themselves they consume the same thing they hate. But I'm rate limited because moderation of political discussion on this website is a joke unless you want to agree with everyone, so no more comments from me there.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by parthdesai on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @03:43PM (#13979969)
Hmm, where was the opposition when libya happened?
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by jayess on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @01:05PM (#13978375)
Which, of course, the NYT played its part in fanning the flames of war.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by dmix on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @03:21PM (#13979763)
NYT is still very war hawkish. Which wasn't so bad before when they were feigning neutrality. They were just a mainstream US paper pushing the 'company' line of their various connections in the gov. It was easy to look past.

But now that they've become more blatantly partisan (maybe as they infer here because it clearly sells more to be hyper partisan) it leaves me with an odd feeling that they are pushing back hard towards the Clinton-esque center left war-friendly surveillance-state Russian-boogiemen establishment politics that so many people (not just on the right) seem to be trying evolve beyond. At least the younger generations. And they say Trump is harking back to the old days...

After reading NYT daily for nearly a decade I'v moved to WSJ. It is much more expensive but I've been much happier reading it - as someone who doesn't care for either US party. I don't have to sift through vague connections to Russia or questionable accusations of secret white nationalism every time I read a political story about someone related to the current administration.

For example, I was just reading a profile of Donald Trump Jr. in NYT. Half way through the article they say he's been accused of making 'white nationalist' statements. Upon further reading it turns out to be because he made an off hand reference to 'gas chamber' in a random speech. So instead of making the obvious assumption he was referring to the form of capital punishment used in the US until the 1990s (and still used as a back up to lethal injection in some states), which is exactly what he claims to have been referring to, they decide to infer he was making some anti-semitic reference to the holocaust.

I am far from a Trump supporter but this type of weak partisan character assassination doesn't belong in a reputable paper like NYT.

So I'm not surprised to see a random swipe at Trump within the first few paragraphs of a non-political story... it's their shtick now.

Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by specialist on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @04:37PM (#13980440)
NYT's opposition to Trump et al is not partisan, its self-interest (survival).
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by goldenkey on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @06:32PM (#13981430)
Its partisan hackery any way you slice it. They made their cake by stacking the deck for Clinton. Search NYT on wikileaks podesta emails. NYT had time to be fair after they lost the election. Instead they doubled down. Who cares what their reasons are - like Trump said, their intent is to deceive and spread misinformation for nefarious and anti-proletariat motives. Fuck em
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by MaysonL on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @04:41PM (#13990373)
So why did they spend so many column-inches on Clinton's emails, and so few on Trump's scandals?
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by TheCoelacanth on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @04:33PM (#13980399)
Give him time.

If there is no media around to complain when he starts wars, then yes that is more dangerous.

Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by tracker1 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @06:47PM (#13981541)
Really? I mean, it's not like the last Democrat president did anything to stop any wars. Or curb surveillance... or actually bring much transparency into government. All things he promised in his first campaign... I mean, constitutionally Obama was plainly against it, but I at least had some hope when he was elected he might actually do some of the things he'd promised. But no, more war, more bombs, more spying and surveillance.

It's not like any of this started with Trump, and isn't like any of it would really be stopped by a president for the other party, that served in the last administration over the department most directly covering spying and warfare.

Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by smt88 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @12:52PM (#13978257)
Who did that? What was the last war that killed millions?
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by bulletsvshumans on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @01:14PM (#13978465)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

Estimates appear to vary widely, with most in the hundreds of thousands range, but there's one estimate as high as a million deaths in the Iraq War (from the linked page):

"Opinion Research Business (ORB) poll conducted August 12–19, 2007, estimated 1,033,000 violent deaths due to the Iraq War. The range given was 946,000 to 1,120,000 deaths. A nationally representative sample of approximately 2,000 Iraqi adults answered whether any members of their household (living under their roof) were killed due to the Iraq War. 22% of the respondents had lost one or more household members. ORB reported that "48% died from a gunshot wound, 20% from the impact of a car bomb, 9% from aerial bombardment, 6% as a result of an accident and 6% from another blast/ordnance."

(full Wikipedia page on this survey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualt...)

Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by Filligree on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @01:14PM (#13978468)
The Iraq war killed over half a million, and led to conditions that were a direct cause of ISIS' rise, for Eris knows how many more.

I don't know how much you want to attribute to it overall, but the war was based on fake evidence.

Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by smt88 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @07:53PM (#13982008)
I agree that the war was based on lies. I agree it was a travesty. I honestly just wanted to know if I was correct in assuming that 1) they were indeed talking about Iraq, and 2) that they were accusing NYT of causing that war.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by rapsey on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @01:08PM (#13978404)
I guess you don't remember the lead up to the Iraq war.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by komali2 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @01:24PM (#13978565)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

Estimates range from ~100,000 to 700,000.

The Iraq War was a mistake that sixty years from now we will be mocked and judged for, but be careful with words like "millions."

Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by ConfuciusSay02 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @01:53PM (#13978868)
Ahh yes, just an honest mistake, and so long as only one million people are killed, not two, then we can promptly dismiss any concerns. Is that how it works?

I wonder if you think the NYT had a hand in pushing for the first Iraq war? How about in Yugoslavia? Panama? Libya? Syria? Or were all of those moral and noble humanitarian wars where the death and destruction was worth it?

Although the Iraq war is the best and most blatant example of the NYT's warmongering, it is far from the only one. All of these wars combined easily resulted in millions of deaths.

Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by komali2 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @04:20PM (#13980292)
>so long as only one million people

Nobody has claimed one million were killed. Stop trying to spread wrong information, it is the same thing as lying.

>I wonder if you think the NYT had a hand in pushing for the first Iraq war? How about in Yugoslavia? Panama? Libya? Syria? Or were all of those moral and noble humanitarian wars where the death and destruction was worth it?

Holy fucking non sequitur, batman. What does a media agenda have to do with a moral position on war? How is "NYT had a hand in pushing for" related to the question of whether your examples were "moral and noble humanitarian wars?" You can't just say a thing that's absurd, and then immediately assume they're true, so that you can jump to making a moral attack. Here's a great resource for you: http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/eng207-td/Logic%20and%20Analy...

>best and most blatant example of NYT's warmongering

Somehow we started at outright lies about the number of deaths in the Iraq war, and concluded that the NYT is a warmongering institution with the power to mobilize the most powerful military on the planet at it's whim, and thus is responsible for every death caused by the US military throughout history.

Hey let's take it up a notch, did you know humans never landed on the moon and that Mark Zuckerberg's evil twin, Matt Zuckerberg, is running a robotic pizza factory that snoops through people's emails? Benghazi.

Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by ConfuciusSay02 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @04:42PM (#13980485)
Yes, people have claimed over one million have been killed in the second Iraq war. And you can easily make an argument for the fact that the war has never really ended, thus if you include figures up to 2017 it is unequivocally over one million.

I'm simply pointing out that the NYT functions as a critical cog in the overall propaganda machine that provides cover for the establishment warmongering agenda. That cover, almost without exception, revolves around framing these wars as humanitarian wars that supposedly help the people and bring them freedom and democracy (by bombing the crap out of them). I'm sorry I didn't spell that out explicitly. NYT absolutely had a hand in pushing for all the aforementioned wars.

Finally, I'm not saying the NYT is controlling the military, it is obviously the other way around - NYT is the mouthpiece of the established powers. But this discussion is in the context of comparing what is more dangerous; an establishment mouthpiece propaganda outlet that provides cover for killing millions, or Trump saying some questionable things from time to time. As of right this moment, NYT's track record looks much worse to me. But hey, maybe you're on the side of people like Madeleine Albright who think that killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children through sanctions was totally worth it.

Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by komali2 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @05:38PM (#13980945)
>people have claimed over one million

According to the Wikipedia article 2 people have linked to you, only Opinion Research Business survey claims it was one million. And only one million, not "maybe 2 million or more!". If you have evidence or other sources, could you please contribute to our collective knowledge by updating the Wikipedia page? You don't even need an account to do it and we're all guaranteed relative quality by editor review that way.

>And you can easily make an argument for the fact that the war never really ended

When you say "Iraq War" people are going to think you mean this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War which took place from 2003-2011. There's an article on the Iraqi Civil War if you want to talk about that, but it's a different thing. If you want to talk about Middle East action in general, ok, but as we go on you're going to be lumping more and more extremely complicated conflicts into your "This is the NYT's fault" argument, which is already tenuous.

>simply pointing out that NYT functions as a critical cog in the overall propaganda machine

Dude, this is an extraordinary claim. You can't just toss that tidbit over the wall and be like "FACTS!" You gotta support that. You haven't yet, that I can see.

>agenda

Extraordinary claim. Burden of proof (or at least argument) is on you.

>NYT is the mouthpiece of the established powers

How can that be true when NYT is critical of the current government? Are you suggesting there's a shadow-government that is opposed to Trump, and in control of the NYT as well as the US military?

>maybe you're on the side of people... who think that killing hundreds of thousands

Stop trying to do that. It's so fucking transparent when you try to derail the argument through personal attack via non sequitur like that. You want to talk about propaganda techniques? You're (attempting) to employ them as mechanically as if you've got the "Guide to Misinformation via Trolling on the Internet" textbook sat next to you.

Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by praxulus on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @03:48PM (#13980019)
No, the way it works is that nobody should get away with lying just because they're calling out a bad thing for being bad.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by zerocrates on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @01:13PM (#13978446)
I believe the quibble there is that millions didn't die in the Iraq War.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by tracker1 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @06:52PM (#13981589)
s/millions/over a million/g
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by smt88 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @07:47PM (#13981968)
But that's still likely too high.

The truth is important. Getting facts wrong about wars can only help people who are pro-war by making pacifists look uninformed.

Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by tracker1 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @08:53PM (#13982335)
Well, how about over a quarter of a million bombs/missiles dropped during the Obama administration? If over half a million deaths in Iraq isn't enough, that number should be sobering.
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by smt88 on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @06:08AM (#13984727)
Again, these points are well-made using the real numbers. I could only find 100k bombs under Obama. Can you cite your number?
Re:Software Engineer Starts Unlikely Business: A Weekly News... by tracker1 on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @07:34PM (#13991613)
When I last looked into it, there were over 20k most years (26k in 2016 alone). so more likely closer to 200k (over 8 years), been a while since I looked... In any case, it's a horrific number.