I'm anyways skeptical of those who refer to "the media" or "the West" as a single entity.
"Much of the press saw U.S. troops as defending a pro-Western populace against a deeply unpopular Taliban insurgency. But Blue quickly realized that, in the insurgent heartlands, which lie in rural areas, the story was much more nuanced. To begin with, U.S.-occupied Afghanistan had been a divided realm; Afghans living in areas of relative calm tended to oppose the Taliban, but those living in war-racked regions often saw the Taliban as a better alternative to the corrupt U.S.-backed government. The Western media missed this story."
Is there an example of such a story (that describes near universal support for the US backed Afghan government and ignores the attitudes of rural areas) from any of the newspapers he mentions (WSJ, New York Times, Washington Post)?
I tried searching for "NYTimes rural Afghanistan 2019" and this is what I got:
"As American diplomats push for a peace deal with the Taliban to end the 17-year war, a strong voice of protest, largely coming from urban centers, has been cautioning against a rushed deal that could endanger some of the gains of past years. Those include women’s right to work and education, as well as an independent news media.
On the other hand, however, is the nearly half of the country that is caught between the two sides of the seesawing conflict. The constant fighting has deprived these rural Afghans of most of the improvements — schools and institutions — at the center of concerns over peace negotiations. And the voices of those Afghans are notably underrepresented in the debate."
Yeah my first guess on #74 was 7.7 miles away (!) so I thought for sure I would get it. But it turns out that the flag location is actually 14 miles away according to Google Maps, and the multiple photos "of the same place" are over 6 miles apart. So I kept getting weird numbers for my guesses that didn't line up with the geography.
What do you think they study at the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice ?