I think in the past that may have been true, but they are now pretty anti the current admin. If we evaluate on their rhetoric then we should be on the verge of war with Russia rather than N Korea.
You haven't noticed that USA is in constant war in many different parts of the world? You might be a Washington Post reader!
Many other nations are not in such a state of constant war, since their respective military-industrial complexes do not dictate acceptable public discourse in the way that ours does. It doesn't require a "conspiracy" as such. Reporters and pundits sing for their suppers, as it were, and they find that singing some tunes gets them on the right shows, the right "inside" access, etc. Singing other tunes leaves them on the outside looking in, with "insane" pacifists. This is how we can all be "sure" e.g. that Assad used chemical weapons against Syrians when not a shred of evidence ever existed for that.
> Many other nations are not in such a state of constant war, since their respective military-industrial complexes do not dictate acceptable public discourse in the way that ours does.
That seems like an oversimplification. I can also say that many countries around the world _are_ involved in multiple ongoing military conflicts just as the US is. You bring up Syria as though the US were the only other country involved...
But that's not the point I was making. My response was to the notion that the news and government were somehow masterminding the flow of information in order to prepare the population for specific wars. As though multiple parties were conspiring. Which seems a bit hard to swallow to me.
In addition to other countries like France, Russia, Iran, African Union, etc involved different ways in foreign affairs, some times, or often times those involvements are stabilizing. Sometimes they're very destabilizing.
> read up on NYT's Iraq War lies told on behalf of USG. This is how America works
TL; DR the New York Times unquestioningly published what the government told them, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction [1]. This reminds me of the faith Americans had in their government preceding the Vietnam War.
Saying this is "how America works," however, is a willful short-circuiting of cognitive faculties. It's how any trusting society works until it's burned. We got burned, again, and now the press is more critical of anything the government says.
I know a few reporters at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Catching the government (or anyone occupying a position of power) in a compromising lie is a prize they aggressively seek.
It seems like whenever articles critical of significant foreign governments come up on Hacker News, these sorts of comments materialize. Just because the American media is criticizing a country doesn't mean (a) the criticism is invalid, (b) it was directed by the U.S. government or (c) said organization isn't similarly critical of the American government. (It's still good to read multiple countries' newspapers, though. On the topic at hand, Der Spiegel and Le Temps have written extensively.)
