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(photo: DoD/Kyle Davis)
This week on CounterSpin: Every news report contains text—whatever new information is being conveyed—and subtext: a lesson it’s underscoring, or a pattern it fits. When it’s a foreign policy story, as in coverage of current negotiations on ending the war in Afghanistan, the subtext is that the US may naturally, legitimately unleash all the violent, life-shattering power it sees to fit to muster in those countries in which it deems itself interested, and the terms for cessation of that violence should be judged primarily, if not entirely, according to those interests. We’ll look at Afghanistan through a different lens with Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, and author of, among other titles, Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer, with David Wildman, and Before & After: US Foreign Policy and the War on Terror.
Transcript: ‘The Afghan Government Is as Corrupt as Governments Come’
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Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of Venezuelan “aid.”
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin Banter @http://www.fair.org/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin190215Banter.mp3″]
Excellent week in review! Interview added greatly to my understanding of the Afghan situation and provides a rare space for Afghani women and children to have their situation acknowledged.
What he said.