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Wren C. de la O's avatar

"What next?"

Suggested ideas for starters —download "War Game" on YouTube, Prime, or other platforms.

Great historians to follow —Heather Cox Richardson, Anne Applebaum

Learn about more great pro-democracy voices on these pods— Politics Girl, and on MSNBC— Rachel Maddow's brilliant series, "Ultra". 2 seasons and on-going.

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Reldas's avatar

Read "The State and Revolution" by Vladimir Lenin to learn exactly what to do when an unelected gazillionaire madman Czar takes over your country, steals from regular people and brutally oppresses them, all to amass more wealth and power for himself and his cronies.

Here's a link to read it for free!

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/

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Wren C. de la O's avatar

Thanks! Sounds riveting. On it now!

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Janie Weaver's avatar

Also, Ruth Ben-Ghiat and M. Ghessen (also under Masha Ghessen).

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Forrest's avatar

Anne Applebaum has advocated for the military killing journalists before. I can't in good conscience recommend her.

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Wren C. de la O's avatar

If that allegation about Anne Applebaum is accurate, I'd really like to get source material, links, publications, recordings.

No doubt anyone taking a position for the misuse of military against the press would seem an unforgivable, and dangerous fascist. I'm highly surprised by this mention, but if it's true, thank you for bringing it up.

It is hard to bring that particular bit of data together with any of the recordings that I've personally listened to.

But if it can be substantiated, one universal truth is that actual life is stranger than fiction.

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Forrest's avatar

You can read the article for yourself and decide if I'm mischaracterizing it. It is entitled "Kill the Messenger".

Relevant section at end: "Establishing a credible media will be, for the Palestinians, part of what it takes to establish a credible state. Until then, the Voice of Palestine will remain what it has become: a combatant—and therefore a legitimate target—in a painful, never-ending, low-intensity war."

Note that she never says this organization or its journalists ever actually engage in physical combat. She accuses them of bias and of fake news. For this, she calls them combatants and legitimate targets.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/01/targeting-radio-and-tv-stations.html

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Janie Weaver's avatar

I find that hard to believe. What evidence?

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Forrest's avatar

You can read the article for yourself and decide if I'm mischaracterizing it. It is entitled "Kill the Messenger".

Relevant section at end: "Establishing a credible media will be, for the Palestinians, part of what it takes to establish a credible state. Until then, the Voice of Palestine will remain what it has become: a combatant—and therefore a legitimate target—in a painful, never-ending, low-intensity war."

Note that she never says this organization or its journalists ever actually engage in physical combat. She accuses them of bias and of fake news. For this, she calls them combatants and legitimate targets.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/01/targeting-radio-and-tv-stations.html

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Wren C. de la O's avatar

Thank you for the link. I'll give it a view and ponder this discussion.

For now, I might take her view from this point in time, as an accurate assessment of what has already happened.

Being that she doesn't state which journalists specifically *should* be targeted as combatants, I'm not sure that she is actually advocating such a position. It could be, that she is only making an observation on the state of affairs as it was at the time.

The bottom line on this subject is, "war is shitty". And sadly, inescapable at this juncture in human evolution. Slow learners, humankind is.

All that said, I find her contribution to the present moment with her latest, "Autocracy, Inc." provides valuable insights for the many who are still shocked, and still asking, "Why is this happening?"

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Bruce Lawrence's avatar

Applebaum wrote that during the Second Intifada, when the Palestinian Authority was at war with Israel. Voice of Palestine is wholly owned by the PA, just as Voice of America is wholly owned by the US government. When a government is at war, any department that is not explicitly flying a white flag can be reasonably regarded as part of its war effort.

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Forrest's avatar

This implies that journalists from the BBC or NPR could be legitimately targeted as combatants, because they are part of a war effort. In fact, this implies that any civilian that could be implicated as part of a war effort are lawful combatants, despite them not actually being combatants.

Is this an accurate characterization of your view?

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