I don’t know about that. I think they were pretty unapologetic about and certainly provided (bad but clear) ideological reasons for all the murdering they did, even making them official government projects. Don’t remember reading much about handwaving except in the context of certain types of salutes.

Nowhere in that comment was I equivocating the two. It’s not like the only two options are “USA bad, Iran good” or “USA bad, Iran bad”. That’s just a false dichotomy and more of the kind of black and white thinking I was criticizing. I also don’t have to find ways to not feel uncomfortable about it simply because I am not an American.

Yes, Nazis famously made nuanced moral judgements and never sought to demonize or thought certain groups were unequivocally bad at all. LMFAO.

Ah yes, if only we’d let moral absolutists like you take the wheel, we’d finally have a world where every conflict is solved by pointing at the other side and yelling “No, you’re the baddie!”

Heaven forbid anyone try to classify things at a level above a kindergarten playground.

It’s not naive, it’s absolutely essential that one is able to assess differences even between two bad actors. What I would suggest is naive is to deny this. Coincidentally such thinking also played a part in electing Trump instead of Kamala because people suggested there was no difference.

As I said. “Analysis” only based on a theoretical framework with zero supporting facts is not analysis, it’s dogma.

Sorry but colonialism being to blame here seems like an a priori assumption with you and not anything that you’ve actually factually established.

I certainly don’t have a problem with the idea of colonialism or other parts of history having very long lasting and diverse effects but it’s just not the case that we can say it is the root cause of any given issue absent of any real evidence for such a claim.

No doubt it and many other historical events will affect many things later on but it’s still not really a reasonable position to assume that has to be it even with lots of evidence that makes it seem unlikely in a particular case. Colonialism did not introduce anti-homosexual attitudes to the African continent. Islam, which arrived before the western colonialists also has them but wasn’t the first appearance of that there either.

Even assuming that this has anything directly to do with religion which is already a big leap it is a Muslim majority country that had no laws against homosexuality prior to or right after independence from France… Sorry but this sounds like a pretty difficult one to pin on western colonialism.

not really a solution when most of the news media engages in it and it’s not abour reliability per se, just about ambigous titles designed to make people click.

not a great rule considering how much clickbait even reputable news outlets engage in these days… can see it a bit even in this one…