Crime against society: Media shill for power elite
Editing, brief comment by
Carolyn Bennett
Carolyn Bennett
Media’s divide-and-shill
masks sinister deeds. And considering Baltimore and similar incidents, Jay
Johnson asks: “Will the riots lead to more people calling for the State to
normalize the situation? What role do media
play in shaping the narrative?
Trayvon Martin in Florida, Eric
Garner in New York, Michael Brown in Ohio, Freddie Gray in Baltimore—Media Tool
of Distortion: repeat it often enough and…
Though all of these young men “had
troubled pasts, the entire debate [focuses] on how the police interact with the
public.” However, Johnson points out, what is happening in all of these cases
is not happening to the public in general; it is happening to “a very specific
group of people who happen to be poor and from a minority ethnic group and who live
in a certain area.”
To smear any general group (the
public, Americans, Russians, Muslims, Jews, a race of people, police departments) is to manipulate and distract from what is really going on.
Slanting,
coloring, blow-drying, falsifying
The media employ “catch-phrases
and slogans.” They “manipulate imagery and audio” and employ “selective fact
reporting” purposely leaving out information. Media shape the narrative,
Johnson says, but toward what end?
Media's Case of Trayvon Martin
The repeated image of Martin,
Johnson reports, was of a “young smiling preteen” but “in reality [Martin] was a
nearly full-grown 17-year-old … [whose] Facebook pictures were anything but
smiling.” Zimmerman was portrayed in a variety of images depending seemingly on the whim of the reporting organization.
Media's Case of Michael Brown
Again the repeated image was of a
young Michael Brown but a different picture of Brown surfaces in results of a Google
search.
But after all the media
repetition and misleading images, “after the media trial and a grand jury” the
result is a society divided, not better for the truth; “what really happened on that fateful day [of
the Zimmerman-Martin encounter remains] unclear.”
From the Michael Brown case rose the “‘#handsup
hashtag’” but “it is [also] unclear how [Brown] could have had his hands
up since he was apparently shot in the back while running away.”
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ohnson is not trying to suggest,
nor would I, that these cases are not tragedies. Of course, they are tragedies
all round. But he is suggesting that the public has been denied the true facts
while the media employ tactics that distract and cover up other parties and
forces.
Questionable
online chatter, incitement re Missouri and Maryland cases
Johnson reports other sources’ discovery
that 20 to 50 “social media accounts in Baltimore” (Maryland) were “tied to the
peak period of violence in Ferguson” (Missouri) … suggesting “the presence of ‘professional
protesters’ or anarchists’ taking advantage of Freddie Gray’s death to incite
more violence.”
Agitators, professional
provocateurs: Other sources, he reports, were questioning the appearance among Baltimore
“rioters” of “six-foot tall white guys with bandannas over their faces” and
speculating that these people were “professional provocateurs … trying to stir up young
kids, make it look like [this is] right.”
Life
imitating fiction: “The Purge”
A brief on this film says it is a
set-in-the-future story of “a wealthy family held hostage for harboring the
target of a murderous syndicate during a 12-hour period in which any
and all crime is legalized.” The Purge, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2184339/
It seems that in the Baltimore
case, the mayor decriminalized crime for her own sinister motives. After a
weekend of rioting, police were called off on Monday. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie
Rawlings-Blake is quoted saying — “…We also gave those who wished to destroy
space to do that as well.” Why would a mayor
seemingly condone violence and destruction of her city?”The background on the mayor is
interesting. Johnson points to infowars.com notes showing that
“‘Rawlings-Blake was one of three mayors
who provided broad input into President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, which advocates the
federalization of police departments across the country. … This could explain
her inaction to stop the rioting when it began. 
“‘By allowing it to spiral out of control,
the mayor and her friends at the [US Department of Justice] could use the
unrest to justify the expansion of federal power into local law enforcement,
which would also allow her to receive more funding.’”
Dialing for dollars: The Feds in
the past few years have “given surplus military gear such as machine guns,
drones, MRAPS (light tanks) to local, state and federal agencies.”
SWAT units, Johnson says, are now
part of federal agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad
Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel
Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, even the Department of Education. Reportedly federal agencies such as
the IRS and Social Security Administration, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (overseer of the National Weather Service) are purchasing
ammunition and weaponry in bulk.
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pparently, just as the FBI
reportedly creates “terrorists” to arrest “terrorists”, and in so doing boost
its budget and justify its existence; so too do government agencies in general create
crime to combat crime.
Fear mongering in domestic
affairs as in US foreign affairs covers what is really going on and justifies
force, violence, the militarization of municipalities.
Looking at underlying causes including
the continuing collapse of the US economy, the criminally widening gulf into “third-world”
inequality—largely because higher ups are essentially getting away with murder,
robbing not only the nation’s wealth but the world’s wealth without putting
back or investing in substantive and sustaining resources for human independence,
advancement and uplift—the oppressive arm of militaries and weaponry are set
loose on communities, as on underdeveloped countries, to protect power elites, the
higher-ups and their partners, the ruling plutocracy and its plunder.
As voices and actions rise in
resistance, the voice of the plutocracy demands “order”, that the State protect
and preserve this cabal by military force. Jay Johnson question is, “Will
Americans welcome with open arms the coming police state?”
Sources and notes
“Will Americans Welcome the
Coming Police State With Open Arms?” Jay Johnson [Connecting the Pieces], April
30-May 2, 2015, http://sputniknews.com/radio_connecting_the_pieces/20150430/1021566260.html
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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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