A brief meditation on media manipulation: Israel, Republicans, ordinary politics

Haaretz has perpetrated a headline.

“Biden Administration Braces for Potential ‘Sh**show’ in Appointing New U.S. Ambassador to Israel – U.S. News”

It’s a good mental exercise to recall that whenever such scare language (here, “sh**show”) is deployed in headlines, you’re being manipulated to feel bad.

Just as whenever euphemism and omission are deployed to avoid characterizing a topic more accurately, you’re being manipulated to feel normal and reassured.

Here is the unattributed passage of the Haaretz article giving us our scare word:

TOC Ready Room 19 Oct 2021; *UPDATE*

[Updates added at the bottom. – JED]

Greetings, readers.  This is the inaugural edition of the TOC Ready Room, which will be an open thread and drop-by briefing space in the spirit of the ready rooms used by military aviators.

My experience being with U.S. Navy ready rooms, the feature image is of a ready room on the carrier USS Constellation (CV64) used by a squadron from Carrier Air Wing 2.  The image is tagged as being from March 2003, when Constellation was on her final operational deployment supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.  (The CVW-2 patch is visible on one of the flight jackets, incidentally.)  Constellation was decommissioned only a few months later, in August 2003.

On a carrier, the ready room is used for planning and squadron briefings, but also serves as a gathering space subject to availability.  It’s the center of squadron life during underway periods and deployment.

The Ready Room posts will be added at least once a week,

U.S. sends strongly-worded ‘Media Note’ on Russian military actions in Syria

Now we’re finally deploying the big guns.

We’ve had six weeks of fruitless palaver as Russia built up a military force in Syria, and 48 hours of misdirection and excuse-making from the White House, as Russia put the military force to work bombing non-ISIS targets – some of them linked to U.S.-backed rebels.

When was the joke going to end, and the American response start?  Even some Obama supporters were starting to get nervous.

Obama admin throws fuel on fire, warns Israel could be dragged into Iraq conflict

 

Image via National Journal (6 Jun 2014 article by Kevin Baron entitled “Meet the Insurgency: Inside the Liberal Takeover of U.S. National Security”)

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

Kerry tries desperately to force deal of century on Iran

 

Chasing Iran around the planet.

Objectively, the deal being offered to Iran in the talks in Geneva is a very good one, for Iran.  Iran already, preemptively, has either announced delays in disputed activities like starting up new centrifuge arrays and continuing construction at the Arak plutonium reactor, or has actually suspended them.  As regards those points of negotiation, Iran wouldn’t even have to change her reported plans over the next six months to comply with the six-month interim deal on offer.