Source: Eunomia
by Daniel Larison

“Unconditional U.S. backing for an atrocious Israeli military campaign in Gaza encouraged Netanyahu to engage in more lawless and dangerous behavior, and repeated Israeli attacks on Iranian targets finally provoked a significant response when they crossed the line with an illegal attack on a consulate. Netanyahu and his coalition are chiefly responsible for all this, but they would not have been able to create so much wreckage and devastation without lockstep U.S. support.” (04/15/24)

https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/lockstep-us-support-fuels-conflict

Source: Racket News
by Matt Taibbi

“Call it the ‘propaganda two-step.’ A corporate or political actor makes dubious claim X, which quickly appears as stronger claim X +1 in headlines. Insinuation married to exaggeration creates deception. With the two-step, neither party is fully responsible for the end claim. In May of last year, an observational study concluded Pfizer’s ubiquitous Covid-19 treatment Paxlovid was ‘associated with a decreased risk’ of hospitalization or death. A short time later, in the January 4th New York Times story, ‘Paxlovid Cuts Covid Death Risk. But Those Who Need It Are Not Taking It,’ the same study was cited to make the claim that Paxlovid is ‘stunningly effective in preventing severe illness and death.’ It was a classic example of two-stage exaggeration. Matt Bivens is in a unique position to see both ends of the construction of medical misconceptions. He entered the workforce as a journalist.” (04/15/24)

https://www.racket.news/p/q-and-a-dissecting-paxlovids-lifesaving

Source: EconLog
by Scott Sumner

“The Fed would really like to avoid any further increase in interest rates. This psychological aversion to interest rate increases in not rational, and it actually makes it more likely that the Fed will find it necessary to raise interest rates even further. That’s because this sort of ‘reversal aversion’ is itself a form of forward guidance, which makes monetary policy more clumsy. It increases the risk that disinflation will reverse course, requiring further rate increases.” (04/15/24)

https://www.econlib.org/some-counterintuitive-thoughts-on-monetary-policy/

Source: TomDispatch
by Ellen Cantarow

“Words can’t express the horrors of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. To actually feel the nightmare, you would have to be there under the bombs, fleeing with Palestinians desperately seeking a safe place that doesn’t exist; seeing building after building destroyed; treading through blood in one of the few, only partially standing hospitals; and witnessing children and other patients sprawled on hospital floors, limbs amputated without anesthesia (Israel having blocked all medical supplies). It has taken the Jewish state’s savagery to break decades of silence about its history of crimes against humanity. U.S. military historian Robert Pape has called the onslaught against Gaza ‘one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.’ Former U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Andrew Gilmour has said that we are witnessing ‘probably the highest kill rate of any military … since the Rwandan genocide of 1994.'” (04/15/24)

https://tomdispatch.com/dead-on-arrival/