Even for corporate "news," the hypocrisy on Afghanistan is a nadir

I know that I'm far from the only one who saw this coming, during the corporate media hysterics over the withdrawal of U.S. ground forces.

As the United States withdrew militarily from Afghanistan in August, US TV news interest in the plight of the country’s citizens spiked, often focusing on “the horror awaiting women and girls” (CNN Situation Room, 8/16/21) to argue against withdrawal (FAIR.org, 8/23/21).

Four months later, as those same citizens have been plunged into a humanitarian crisis due in no small part to US sanctions, where is the outrage?

...Since November 1, well into the worsening crisis, FAIR identified only 37 TV news segments from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and MSNBC that mentioned “humanitarian” in the same sentence as Afghanistan. That’s 37 segments in seven weeks.

For perspective, as the US withdrew in August, journalists from those shows mentioned “women’s rights” in the same sentence as Afghanistan more often—42 times—in just seven days. Today, as those women and girls face starvation, the deeply concerned TV reporters are virtually nowhere to be seen. - FAIR

How bloated can the Pentagon budget get?

I'm passing this along because it's a thorough look at the current reality.

Where are you going to get the money? That question haunts congressional proposals to help the poor, the unhoused, and those struggling to pay the mortgage or rent or medical bills, among so many other critical domestic matters. And yet — big surprise! — there’s always plenty of money for the Pentagon. In fiscal year 2022, in fact, Congress is being especially generous with $778 billion in funding, roughly $25 billion more than the Biden administration initially asked for. Even that staggering sum seriously undercounts government funding for America’s vast national security state, which, since it gobbles up more than half of federal discretionary spending, is truly this country’s primary, if unofficial, fourth branch of government...

Why, then, does each year’s NDAA rise ever higher into the troposphere, drifting on the wind and poisoning our culture with militarism? Because, to state the obvious, Congress would rather engage in pork-barrel spending than exercise the slightest real oversight when it comes to the national security state. It has, of course, been essentially captured by the military-industrial complex, a dire fate President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about 60 years ago in his farewell address. Instead of being a guard dog for America’s money (not to mention for our rapidly disappearing democracy), Congress has become a genuine lapdog of the military brass and their well-heeled weapons makers.

So, even as Congress puts on a show of debating the NDAA, it’s really nothing but, at best, a political Kabuki dance (a metaphor, by the way, that’s quite common in the military, which tells you something about the well-traveled sense of humor of its members). Sure, our congressional representatives act as if they’re exercising oversight, even as they do as they’re told, while the deep-pocketed contractors make major contributions to the campaign “war chests” of the very same politicians. It’s a win for them, of course, but a major loss for this country — and indeed for the world. - AlterNet

Big Ag's ongoing push to control the narrative

This article is actually wide-ranging, with plenty of positive stuff in it. It just so happens that I’m quoting this:

Industry representatives took that messaging and ran with it. Multiple panelists repeatedly referred to an amorphous “them” to refer to an uneducated public without their hands in the dirt. As a result, the conversations often felt politicized and at odds with other discussions happening around the country, in which politicians are calling for shifts away from classes of pesticides or experts are recommending Americans reduce meat consumption (which is currently much higher than dietary guidelines recommend) to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

This framing was most prominent on a panel devoted to the U.N. Food Systems Summit, which almost immediately turned into a narrative of industry efforts to thwart what they saw as an “anti-animal-ag agenda” driving it. One of the major criticisms scientists and activists had of the U.N. event was that it gave powerful food and agriculture corporations too much of a voice. And, panelists at the Sustainable Ag Summit from the meat, dairy, and animal feed industries laid out, step by step, how they came together to ensure that their interests were represented, specifically by preventing any recommendations to reduce meat consumption. - Civil Eats

The real roots of the Ukraine problem

This article steps back and analyzes the big picture, like it or not. Which is not what corporate media does.

More importantly, the media fail to mention U.S. responsibility for the current tempest, which can be attributed to the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush that unwisely expanded NATO, bringing Russia’s immediate neighbors and even former Soviet republics into an alliance that now has 30 members. NATO expansion is the major irritant in Russian-American relations and the leading cause of what appears to be the start of a new Cold War. Gorbachev’s willingness to accept German reunification without security guarantees explains the Russian vilification of Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze to this day. U.S. wholesale exploitation of Russian weakness in the 1990s explains Putin’s adamant insistence on calling a halt to the Western advance.

The United States has taken additional gratuitous steps on Russia’s doorstep over the past two decades. The administrations of Bush and Obama deployed an advanced surface-to-air missile system in Poland and Romania, arguing that it was needed to counter a possible Iranian missile attack in Eastern Europe. Such nonsense! The U.S. and British navies continue to deploy naval combatants in the Black Sea that threaten to enter Russian territorial waters. Various NATO members in East Europe and the Baltics are requesting additional Western military systems as well as a permanent U.S. military presence. The presence of Germany military forces in the Baltics is a particular affront to Russia’s legitimate concerns about its safety and sovereignty.

President Joe Biden appears no wiser than his four predecessors. - CounterPunch

Big dams pose big risks worldwide

Not long ago I posted about the Glen Canyon Dam, which for all that is wrong with it isn't at near-term risk for catastrophic failure. That's not the case for plenty of dams in the world.

Both dams exemplify the potentially dangerous mix of structural decay, escalating risk, and bureaucratic inertia highlighted in a pioneering new study into the growing risks from the world’s aging dams, published in January by the United Nations University (UNU), the academic and research arm of the UN. It warns that a growing legacy of crumbling dams past their design lives is causing a dramatic increase in dam failures, leaks, and emergency water releases that threaten hundreds of millions of people living downstream. Meanwhile, safety inspectors cannot keep up with the workload. - E360

Why the Great Resignation is happening

We'll see how it plays out. Hopefully a lot of good will come of it.

This trend has been characterized as the Great Resignation, and just about every economist and pundit has taken their crack at teasing out why it’s happening. Explanations have included health and safety fears, child care needs, a tight labor market, boosted savings from stimulus funds or reduced ability to spend money on bars and movies, enhanced unemployment benefits, increases in business formation, desire to work from home, early retirements, restrictions on immigration, demographic shrinking of the prime-age workforce, and my personal favorite, expectations of a labor shortage creating a labor shortage.

Some of these ideas have merit, though none can quite explain everything. In these moments, it’s best to actually ask the workers themselves. I did that, talking to dozens of people who have recently quit their job, or experts who closely track workers who have. And some patterns emerged.

Work at the low end of the wage scale has become ghastly over the past several decades. With no meaningful improvements in federal labor policy since the 1930s, employers have accrued tremendous power. Workers were afraid to voice any disapproval, taking whatever scraps they could get. “The U.S. needs a reset, needs a big push, to get to a place where work is more secure and livable for a lot of the population,” said MIT economist David Autor, who has tracked the misery of American deindustrialization and the shock of China’s rise as a manufacturing powerhouse. - The American Prospect